Synopses & Reviews
“I realized I was leading a double life...”
Robert Louis Stevenson liked to tell the story of how The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) came to him one night in a dream, while staying, for the sake of his health, in the provincial English seaside town of Bournemouth. He wrote the first draft in three days‹then burned it when his wife suggested some changes. The second version was finished by the end of the week, and has scarcely been out of print since. The “double life” that the books hero (the respectable doctor Henry Jekyll) finds himself leading was something that Stevenson himself knew all about: the confined invalid who pioneered the art of travel-writing; the clergymans grandson who decadently slummed it in Edinburghs fleshpots; the Scottish writer spuriously known by a French middle-name...Well, we all have something to hidethough few of our secrets are as dreadful as Dr. Jekylls. This dynamic graphic novel adaptation by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal stays eerily faithful to the creeping chill of the London streets where Stevensons story was originally set.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) won his first literary prize at the age of six; the edition of his collected works he was preparing at the time of his death eventually stretched to 28 volumes. Few writers before or since have matched the range of his restless expertise‹in adventure stories, ballads, plays, essays, folktales, historical romances, light verse, short stories, and travel journalism. Still fewer have managed to invent a complete genre (his Long John Silver is the Pirate of the Caribbean), let alone two: the moral thriller of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde remains a monument to mankinds understanding of itself. What might Stevenson have dreamed if he had lived into his seventies?
Synopsis
The idea for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde famously came to Robert Louis Stevenson one night in a dream. This graphic novel adaptation by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal has transformed that dream into an exquisite nightmare. Their faithful adaptation combines an already-chilling tale with truly haunting artwork.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the story of a respectable London doctor who ends up leading a dreadful double lifeand#151;as a doctor, and as a cold-blooded murderer. Fans of Stevensonand#8217;s original novel and new readers will be riveted by this fascinating moral thriller.
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About the Author
Andrzej Klimowski studied at Saint Martins School of Art in London, and at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He has designed posters for theaters, film distributors in Poland, and book covers and illustrations for publishers in the United Kingdom. His own graphic novels include The Depository, The Secret and Horace Dorlan. Klimowski is professor of illustration at the Royal College of Art, London, England.
and#160;Danusia Schejbal was born in London. After studying Fashion and Textiles at the Ealing School of Art, she earned a postgraduate degree in stage design at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. She worked for major theaters in Poland before returning to the United Kingdom where she worked for the Fringe Theater. Since then she has been working as a painter exhibiting in the UK and Europe. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the second book that Schejbal has collaborated on with Andrzej Klimowski, after The Master and Margarita.