I have been in the rare and antiquarian book business for over forty years; my family has been in the rare books business since 1876. Rare books are in my blood.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1886. Item #06623
First Edition of Jekyll and Hyde in the Original Wrappers
STEVENSON, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1886.
First English edition.
Octavo (9 x 4 5/8 inches; 178 x 118 mm.). [8], 141, [1, blank], [1, ads], [1, blank] pp.
Original buff paper wrappers printed in blue and red. With the 1885 date on the front wrapper altered in ink to 1886 [as always]. Ads for Longman’s Magazine on inner front wrapper and ads for J.G. Whyte Melville’s works on inner rear wrapper. Tiny expert repair to lower margin of front wrapper, small expert repair to gutter margin of rear wrapper. Minimal soiling to wrappers, otherwise a near fine and almost untouched copy with absolutely none of the usual chipping on the paper spine, far superior to the vast majority we have seen over the past fifty years. Truly a wonderful example of this very fragile masterpiece. From the renowned collection off M.S. Slocum of Pasadena with his neat pencil signature on half-title and original catalog description laid-in. Housed in an orange cloth clamshell case with black morocco spine label lettered in gilt.
"The date on the front cover was originally 1885, but the last figure was altered by pen into 6. It had been intended to publish the book in December 1885, 'but when it was ready the bookstalls were already full of Christmas numbers, etc., and the trade would not look at it,' (Mr. Charles Longman in Balfour's Life, ii, 14). The publication was therefore postponed till January 1886" (Prideaux 17).
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) first published in 1886. It is about a London lawyer named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. The novella's impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the very phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" coming to mean a person who is vastly different in moral character from one situation to the next.
"Until 1886 [Stevenson] had never earned much... by his pen. But in that year came two successes which greatly increased his reputation, and with it his power to earn. These were The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped. The former, founded partly on a dream, is a striking apologue of the double life of man. Published as a 'shilling shocker,' a form at that time in fashion, it became instantly popular; was quoted from a thousand pulpits; was translated into German, French, and Danish; and the names of its two chief characters have passed into the common stock of proverbial allusion" (DNB).
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde may be read for its style alone. Many critics have objected to its brevity... but Henry James called the book 'a masterpiece of concision'... If Dracula leaves one with the sensation of having been struck down by a massive, 400-page wall of horror, then Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is like the sudden, mortal jab of an ice pick" (Stephen King).
Due to the delay in placing the book in bookstores in England, its release was preceded by the first American edition by four days.
Beinecke 349. Prideaux 17.
Price: $6,500.00