Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson's masterwork on the contrast between good and evil in human nature was born from a nightmare that his wife awoke him from after hearing his screams. This story of the mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll and the medication that releases his terrible, inner persona-the abhorrent, twisted Mr. Hyde-hasn't lost any of its shock value more than a century later. As Hyde takes control of Jekyll's soul, its realistic police-style narrative chillingly conveys Jekyll's desperation and gives voice to our own concerns of the violence and evil within ourselves. Stevenson's timeless masterpiece, which was written before Freud named the ego and the id, exhibits a great insight of the personality's inner conflicts and continues to be the unavoidably terrible material of our imagination.