Editor’s Note

This is the complete text of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, first published by Longmans, Green, and Co., London, in January 1886. It is set from a public-domain digital transcription of the 1886 text. The title is given here as it stands on the first edition’s title page; the transcription heads the text The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The ten chapters carry Stevenson’s own titles and, as in the first edition, no numbers.

The spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing of the source are kept, including forms such as demeanour, honour, and to-night, the dashes that stand for a year (“18—”), and the capital letters in which the source sets “PEDE CLAUDO” and the signatures of the letters. Only the typography has been brought to the series style: chapter titles in title case rather than capitals, curly quotation marks and apostrophes (the transcription’s grave accents for opening single quotes among them), and closed em dashes for the transcription’s double hyphens.

Two errors of the transcription have been corrected against the 1886 text. In “Dr. Lanyon’s Narrative” the transcription reads “Here were a phial of some salt,” having dropped a phrase; we print “a phial of some tincture, a paper of some salt,” which the preceding sentences require. In “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case” it reads “his love of me is wonderful”; we print “his love of life,” the counterpart of “his fear of death” a sentence earlier. No other change has been made.

Removed from the source: the transcription’s header and license, its title lines, and all distributor notices. The first edition’s dedication to Katharine de Mattos is not part of the transcription and is not supplied here. Nothing has been added to the text.