Know the Type: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr Hyde

Welcome back to our series celebrating authors through readings of their most famous works! Things have taken a turn for the terrifying this week, however, as we continue our celebration of Halloween horrors…
"I don't believe that there was ever such a literary feat before as the writing of Dr Jekyll. I remember the first reading as though it were yesterday. Louis came downstairs in a fever; read nearly half the book aloud; and then, while we were still gasping, he was away again, and busy writing. I doubt if the first draft took so long as three days." These are the words of Lloyd Osbourne, the stepson of Robert Louis Stevenson, on the creation of one of the great horror novellas. One of the original “penny dreadfuls” - a paperback sold for a single shilling - it sold nearly 40,000 copies in its first six months on sale. An American stage adaptation was produced, written by Thomas Russell Sullivan, a year after the novella was published, which came to London the year after - however, the show had to close early as a result of the hysteria surrounding the Jack the Ripper murders.
Listen to the doctor’s own account of the first encounter he had with his completed potion, and the man he would become…
(Music by Zapsplat.com)