Jekyll & Hyde and RL Stevenson

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a psychological thriller, was published in 1886. Its author, Robert Louis Stevenson, a distinguished Scottish man of letters, was born in Edinburgh in 1850. A wide range of his work was published during his lifetime: poetry, novels, essays, travel books, letters and plays. He studied engineering and the law, before embarking on a literary career. Among his best known works are Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, Treasure Island and Kidnapped. He suffered from ill health; hoping to get better, he settled in Samoa in the South Pacific in 1888, dying there in 1894. All these titles and more, including films and musical DVDs, based on or by Robert Louis Stevenson are available through Amazon.

 

Stevenson was a friend of Gertrude Jekyll’s brother, Walter, and he may have borrowed his name for the title of his book. There was a time when they lived in Bournemouth at the same time. Walter was ordained as a priest and then found that he did not have a vocation. He was a complex, intelligent and complex character, a philosopher, author and musician, who spend much of the last half of his life in Jamaica; a brief biography is to be found in Gertrude Jekyll – Essays on the Life of a Working Amateur.

 

The story of the book is about a man of split personality, who has a good side (Dr Jekyll) and a bad side (Mr Hyde), which eventually proves to be dominant. The title of the book is used in a proverbial manner in the English language, as illustrated by the examples in the Longman Dictionary of English Idioms: he’s a real Jekyll and Hyde; at home he’s kind and loving, but in business he’s completely without principles.

 

The family name in England is pronounced Jeekyll with a long e, while in proverbial use, it is Jekyll with a short e.