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Critical Overview

When The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson was published in 1886, it quickly became a best seller in AmericaandGreat Britainand soon, its two main characters became part of the vocabulary of common speech. Whenever someone refers to a "Jekyll and Hyde personality," it is understood to mean someone with a combination of agreeable and disagreeable traits that appear in different situations. Since its initial publication, the work has appeared in several editions in print and has been adapted in various film, television, and audio versions. The novel has gained critical acclaim as well, especially for its narrative structure and its thematic significance.

James Ashcroft Noble, in his 1886 review of the book for The Academy, writes, "It is, indeed, many years since English fiction has been enriched by any.....

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