Dr Jekyll, Mr Hyde and me

For today's countdown to Halloween post, I have decided to blog about a classic horror story that is maybe neglected this time of year:I am referring to The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Everybody knows it, yet I don't think that many people have read the novella. It inspired many adaptations,yet neither Jekyll nor his alter ego Hyde have an iconic image like Dracula or the Monster of Frankenstein, images which we can transform into Halloween decorations easily identifiable and so on. Hyde is ugly, but in the end he is physically a man. I discovered the book in 1990, in my library, just like other horror classics. That year, I read them many of them: Frankenstein, Dracula, Carmilla. I became a proper horror fan, absolutely obsessed by old horror stuff. Yet I did not develop the same fascination towards Stevenson's classic. I don't know why. I rediscovered it in 2006, during my literary countdown to Halloween and really enjoyed it. I wanted to read it in original English and bought the edition you see here (not the greatest cover, but the Introduction was interesting). I still think it deserves more than it has. My Halloweens are sometimes dominated by different themes or tropes, when I read and watch mostly horror fiction about a certain creature: the year of ghosts, the year of vampires, the year of werewolves, the year of Lovecraftian horror, etc. Maybe I should have the year of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, where I will reread the book, its unofficial sequels (I read one which was great), and watch its many adaptations. And of course blog about it when Halloween comes again.