Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

About the Author
Robert Louis Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. A sickly child, he was often confined to bed and continued to suffer from poor health throughout his lifetime. In college, Stevenson rebelled against his conservative and religious upbringing and pursued an unconventional writer’s life. Stevenson was a world traveler, and his first book, An Inland Voyage?(1878) chronicles his canoeing adventures in France. His voyages took him as far as California, Hawaii, and the Samoan Islands. While bedridden with severe respiratory issues, Stevenson produced his best-known works, the children’s classics Treasure Island (1883) and Kidnapped (1886), and the allegorical thriller Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and & Mr. Hyde (1886). Robert Louis Stevenson died on December 3, 1894 in Vailima, Samoa.
Deborah Lutz is the Thruston B. Morton Endowed Chair of English at the University of Louisville. She has published four books, most recently The Brontë Cabinet: Three Lives in Nine Objects and Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture. She is the editor of the Norton Critical Editions of Jane Eyre and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the recipient of an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.
“The annotations are useful, particularly for references to biblical and other literary allusions. [The contexts] section is essential to alerting students to the many subtexts/contexts of the story.”
―MARIA CARRIG, Carthage College
This Norton Critical Edition includes: The first British edition of the novel, published in 1886 by Longmans, Green, and Co., the only edition set directly from Stevenson’s manuscript and for which he read and corrected proofs. Deborah Lutz’s thorough introduction and detailed explanatory footnotes to the novel. Seven illustrations. A rich and relevant selection of background materials centered on the novel’s composition, reception, and historical and cultural contexts, alongside seven of Stevenson’s letters. Interpretative essays by Elaine Showalter, Jack Halberstam, Martin Danahay, and Stephen Arata. A chronology and a selected bibliography.
About the Series
Read by more than 12 million students over fifty-five years, Norton Critical Editions set the standard for apparatus that is right for undergraduate readers. The three-part format―annotated text, contexts, and criticism―helps students to better understand, analyze, and appreciate the literature, while opening a wide range of teaching possibilities for instructors. Whether in print or in digital format, Norton Critical Editions provide all the resources students need.