Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The

Serve yourself, your children with the tools that seed intuitive thinking skills, books that challenge and enrich the imagination. Take them back to the time before the mind-controlling television and electronic games to the origins of the ideas that gave birth to these electronic miracles. - BOOKS that fuel the creative processes of the human imagination. Robert Louis Stevenson's Classic Horror Tale enriched the minds of many a person.

EXCERPT

"I was coming home from some place at the end of the world, about three o'clock of a black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street and all the folks asleep - street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all as empty as a church - till at last I got into that state of mind when a man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman.

All at once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing; for the man trampled calmly over the child's body and left her screaming on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It wasn't like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut.

I gave a few hallos, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectly cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out the sweat on me like running.

The people who had turned out were the girl's own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had been sent put in his appearance. Well, the child was not much the worse, more frightened, according to the Sawbones; and there you might have supposed would be an end to it. But there was one curious circumstance... ."

About the Author Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson

Scottish essayist, poet, and author of fiction and travel books, known especially for his novels of adventure. Stevenson's characters often prefer unknown hazards to everyday life of the Victorian society. His most famous study of the abysmal depths of personality is THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1886). Many of Stevenson's stories are set in colorful locations, they have also horror and supernatural elements. Arguing against realism, Stevenson underlined the "nameless longings of the reader", the desire for experience.

"But we are so fond of life that we have no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us all through, and none of the longest. Small blame to us if we give our whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to the appetities, to honour, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies." (from 'Aes Triplex')

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. He was the only son of Thomas Stevenson, a prosperous joint-engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses, and Margaret Balfour, daughter of a Scottish clergyman. Thomas Stevenson invented, among others, the marine dynamometer, which measures the force of waves. Thomas's grandfather was Britain's greatest builder of lighthouses.

Stevenson was largely raised by his nanny, Alison Cunningham, whom he devoted A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885). Cunningham had strong Calvinist convictions and praying became part of Stevenson's early life, reflected in the poem 'A Thought': "It is very nice to think / The world is full of meat and drink, / With little children saying grace / In every Christian kind of place."

Since his childhood, Stevenson suffered from tuberculosis. During his early years, he spent much of his time in bed, composing stories before he had learned to read. At the age of sixteen he produced a short historical tale. As an adult, there were times when Stevenson could not wear a jacket for fear of bringing on a haemorrhage of the lung. In 1867 he entered Edinburgh University to study engineering. Due to his ill health, he had to abandon his plans to follow in his father's footsteps. Stevenson changed to law and in 1875 he was called to the Scottish bar. By then he had already started to write travel sketches, essays, and short stories for magazines. His first articles were published in The Edinburgh University Magazine (1871) and The Portofolio (1873).

In a attempt to improve his health, Stevenson travelled on the Continent and in the Scottish Highland. However, traveling on boats was not always easy for him. In letter, written on his journey across the Atlantic in 1879, he complained: "I have a strange, rather horrible, sense of the sea before me, and can see no further into future. I can say honestly I have at this moment neither a regret, a hope, a fear or an inclination; except a mild one for a bottle of good wine which I resist". Later Stevenson spent much time in warmer countries. These experiences provided much material for his writings.

Excerpted bio from: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi