Four main aspects help categorise a novel as Gothic. These characteristics include a gloomy setting, specific character types, themes revolving around terror, horror, justice, and revenge.
Born in Edinburgh in 1850, to strict Calvinist parents, Robert Louis Stevenson was a famous Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer. His ill health meant that he spent the latter part of his life voyaging the world, in an attempt to find a climate that suited his health, and this contributed to the exoticism of much of his work. He finally settled in Samoa and died in 1899. Revered during his lifetime, and often harshly underrated since his death, Robert Louis Stevenson is today recognized as one of the the great writers of the nineteenth century, having influenced authors such as Graham Greene, Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov.
One of Stevenson’s most famous and enduringly popular works, the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde describes the mysterious relationship between a respectable and affable doctor and his brutal associate. Set in the grimy streets of Victorian London, this tale of murder, split personality and obscure science, with its chilling final revelation, became an instant horror classic when it was first published in 1886, and has enthralled and terrified generations of readers ever since.
This edition also contains seven other Gothic stories by Stevenson – such as ‘The Body Snatchers’, ‘Markheim’ and ‘Olalla’ – showcasing the author’s mastery of the horror genre and his interest in both the otherworldly and the strange ways the human brain can distort reality.