List $20.00

Written by Robert Louis Stevenson - Audio book performed by Shelly Frasier - Unabridged Fiction - 1 MP3 COMPACT DISC - 3 hours, 9 minutes

Publisher, Tantor Media (2002)

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When a brute of a man tramples an innocent girl, apparently out of spite, two bystanders catch the fellow and force him to pay reparations to the girl's family. The brute's name is Edward Hyde. A respected lawyer, Utterson, hears this story and begins to unravel the seemingly manic behavior of his best friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and his connection with Hyde. Several months earlier, Utterson had drawn up an inexplicable will for the doctor naming Hyde as his heir in the event that he disappears.

Fearing his friend has been blackmailed into this arrangement, Utterson probes deeper into both Jekyll and his unlikely protégé. He is increasingly unnerved at each new revelation. In a forerunner of psychological dramas to come, Stevenson uses Hyde to show that we are both repulsed and attracted to the darker side of life, particularly when we can experience it in anonymity.

About the Author: Scottish essayist, poet and author of fiction and travel books, Robert Louis Stevenson is especially known for his adventure novels. His first success was the romantic adventure story Treasure Island. His prominent works include Kidnapped, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Black Arrow. Characteristic of Stevenson's novels is a skillful use of horror and supernatural elements. Often his stories are set in colorful locations, where his characters can forget the restrictions of Victorian social manners. Arguing against realism, Stevenson underlined the "nameless longings of the reader," the desire for experience.

Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh. As a child, he suffered from tuberculosis and spent much of his time in bed composing stories before he could even read. His father was a prosperous joint-engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses. Stevenson studied engineering at Edinburgh University but, due to his ill health, had to abandon his plans to follow in his father's footsteps. He changed to law and passed the Scottish bar in 1875. Stevenson then took some time to travel to warmer countries in an attempt to improve his health. These experiences provided much material for his works.

Instead of practicing law, Stevenson devoted himself to writing travel sketches, essays, and short stories for magazines. While on a trip to France he met Fanny Osbourne, whom he married in California in 1880. They later returned to Scotland and moved often, in search of better climates.

In 1885 Stevenson published A Child's Garden of Verses, which was dedicated to his childhood nurse and has since been made into popular as songs. His last work, Weir of Hermiston was left unfinished, but is considered his masterpiece. From the late 1880s Stevenson lived with his family in the South Seas, in Samoa. He enjoyed a period of comparative good health but died of a brain hemorrhage in 1894.