'...man is not truly one, but truly two.' <p/> In this powerful deconstruction of Calvinist belief and the hypocrisy at the heart of Victorian society, Stevenson creates a gothic icon in the divided self that is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Born from a nightmare and anticipating Freud's theory of the unconscious, Stevenson literalises the concepts of the supernatural doppelgänger and the split personality in a timeless tale of guilt, desire, and violence by which all subsequent 'double' stories must be judged. In seeking to cleanse his soul of sin, Dr Henry Jekyll instead unleashes a monster. First published in 1886, this tragic study of the duality of man established Stevenson's international reputation as an author. <p/>
This volume also contains Stevenson's 1887 collection of short stories, The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, which includes a further exploration of the mind of a murderer, 'Markheim', and the occult tales of terror, 'The Merry Men', 'Olalla', and 'Thrawn Janet'.
