The New Annotated Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
By Robert Louis Stevenson
Edited by Leslie S. Klinger
The Mysterious Press 2022

Robert Louis Stevenson’s bombshell of a little book, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde appeared in 1886 to near-universal critical praise (the Times, crucially, dubbed it  “a finished study in the art of fantastic literature”) and absolutely rapturous public popularity. It entered immediately into literary immortality, one of those Victorian additions to the cultural vocabulary that’s become so cemented that students are sometimes surprised that there was ever a time before it existed, surprised, that is, to learn that Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was first a book, written by a person, who had to make the whole thing up – in this case, famously, in a fast and glowingly concerted burst of creativity. 

It’s been enthusiastically in print ever since, and as legendary editor Leslie Klinger illustrates in his terrific Foreword to The New Annotated Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it expanded into half a dozen forms, everything from stage plays and musicals to movies and comic books, plus who knows how many book-variations. Every bookstore, retail or second-hand, has a copy. Every school in the Western world has a copy. Every library has a copy. 

This ubiquity speaks to one thing perhaps more than any other: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of those books that emphatically does not need annotating in order to be enjoyed. Hundreds of millions of readers have enjoyed it without so much as a windy introduction, much less careful notes. This gorgeous new annotated edition is born out of love and abiding interest, not any kind of need. 

Nevertheless, the folks at Mysterious Press gave that extra old college try by supplying a windy introduction anyway, this one by inexplicably popular horror author Joe Hill, who brainlessly stem-winds for a few pages in a range from boring generalities to juvenile word play:

Both Drac [Dracula] and Gray [Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray] embodied this Victorian duality: desire and fear; sexuality and guilt; bedsheets and the funeral shroud. It does not surprise me that stories of vampirism – of seduction and sickness – found new relevancy in the works of Anne Rice, a century later, in the 1980s, an era of AIDS and anxiety. For as long as the carnal goes hand in hand with fears of bodily corruption, the Count will count.

Fortunately, it’s over soon, and we’re off to enjoy Klinger’s patented nerdy deep dives into the minutiae of every line and breath of Stevenson’s little book, whether it’s factual elaboration:

Many locks of the day (especially so-called “Bramah” locks, originally made by Joseph Bramah in the late eighteenth century and copied widely) required a cylindrical key, with a hollow tube. Keeping the key in one’s pocket often caused the cylinder to become filled with lint, which could be blown out; otherwise, the key would not work.

Or whether it’s the quick, fascinating observations he makes on the book’s nuances, as when Stevenson’s narrator mentions the division of his loyalties between Jekyll and Hyde. “Between these two,” he writes, “I now felt I had to choose.” To which Klinger appends: “This is a very “meta” statement, by which RLS cleverly suggests that the narrator is truly neither 100% Jekyll nor 100% Hyde – both personalities are present at all times.” 

Thanks to Klinger’s industry, even readers who’ve enjoyed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde more times than they can count will find something new in these pages, in addition to the hundreds of great illustrations of all kinds. Annotated editions of classics are always entertaining for this kind of celebration, and since it’s been twenty years since Leonard Wolf’s The Essential Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this one is a welcome sight.

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He writes regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor and is the Books editor of Georgia’s Big Canoe News. A compilation of his writing can be found at SteveDonoghue.com.