English Book Club: ‘The strange case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde’ by Robert L. Stevenson

This month we’ve started a new book club for those interested in practice and improve this language. The books we’ve chosen are for people with an intermediate English level, are adapted editions, but we can also offer, for those brave, the full versions.

The first book we’re going to talk about is The strange case of Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde written by Robert L. Stevenson.

First published in 1886, the work is commonly known today as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde.

Mr. Utterson is a London lawyer who is a friend of Dr. Jekyll. Jekyll gave up his regular practice to experiment with non-traditional medicine. Utterson is concerned because Jekyll has written a will that leaves all his money to his new partner Mr. Hyde. Utterson has heard bad things of Hyde and disliked him at first sight. The lawyer thinks his friend is being blackmailed.

One day, the lawyer is asked to identify the body of a murdered man, Sir Danvers Carew, one of Utterson’s clients. Hyde is suspected of the murder, but he has disappeared. Jekyll swears that he has not seen Hyde and has broken with him forever. The case remains unsolved and Jekyll becomes more sociable than he had been.

Suddenly, though, he locks himself into his laboratory, yelling to the servants through the door, directing them to gather chemicals for him. The servants recognize a change in his voice and think that their master has been murdered; another man has taken his place in the lab. They call Utterson who breaks down the door. On the floor lies Hyde, who has killed himself with poison. Sadly, Utterson assumes Hyde returned and killed Jekyll, but the doctor’s body is nowhere to be found.

He does find, however, a letter in which Jekyll explains his relationship to Hyde.

Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Stevenson traveled often, and his global wanderings lent themselves well to his brand of fiction. Stevenson developed a desire to write early in life, having no interest in the family business of lighthouse engineering. He was often abroad, usually for health reasons, and his journeys led to some of his early literary works.

In 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson saw the publication of his first volume of work, An Inland Voyage; the book provides an account of his trip from Antwerp to northern France, which he made in a canoe via the river Oise. In 1881 he published his first book of short fiction, New Arabian Nights (1882).

The 1880s were notable for both Stevenson’s declining health (which had never been good) and his prodigious literary output. He suffered from hemorrhaging lungs (likely caused by undiagnosed tuberculosis), and writing was one of the few activities he could do while confined to bed. While in this bedridden state, he wrote some of his most popular fiction, most notably Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886), Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and The Black Arrow (1888).

In June 1888, Stevenson and his family set sail from San Francisco to travel the islands of the Pacific Ocean. In 1889, they arrived in the Samoan islands, where they decided to build a house and settle. Several of his later works are about the Pacific isles, including The Wrecker (1892), Island Nights’ Entertainments (1893), The Ebb-Tide (1894) and In the South Seas (1896). He died in Samoa in 1894.

To encourage yout to read and speak in english, no matter how fluent you are, we reccomend you to watch this Monty Phyton’s video ‘A book at bedtime’