Customer Reviews

The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Nineteen Other Tales (Modern Library Classics)

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I'm currently reading this book and I've really enjoyed it so far. I thought I'd take a look on here to see what other people thought, and to my surprise, there were no reviews. Well, I'm here to fix that.

I picked this up mainly because I wanted to read Jeckyll & Hyde, which turned out to be an entertaining (and also thought provoking) tale. I've read several of the other short stories over the past few weeks, and they're all well done. If you're even a little interested in Stevenson, I recommend taking a look at this edition. You get a great price, plenty of stories, and a cool-looking cover to boot--can't beat it!

2 sides of the review:
Stevenson: a genius. Very engaging, very smart. If you're new to Stevenson, start with Jekyll & Hyde.
The book: Good paper quality, and binding. Not the best in the world, but very good value for the money.
I bought it as a present, and liked it so much I bought it for myself too :)
In short, a must if you're interested in 19th century fiction.

This has proved to be an excellent purchase for a friend who is a lover of well written stories. The excellent introduction by Barry Menikoff and the informative notes truly help the reader in their appreciation of these stories.

When I was in high school - 60 years ago - I had a paperback copy of the Short Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson. As I read the stories, I circled the words I didn't know and looked them up later. The stories were too engrossing to interrupt my reading. I increased my vocabulary ten fold, whetted my appetite for good writing and planted the seeds for my own prose and poetry. I'm sending one volume to the grandkids "trapped in Boston" and looking forward to reading the other volume before giving it to the local granddaughters here in God's Country.

This volume brings together all Stevenson's short stories and novellas. Yes, it doesn't have his full-length works such as The Black Arrow, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, etc., but I disagree with the reviewer who gave it two stars on that account. As far as I know, in common usage, the term "stories" means short stories, and doesn't encompass "novels."

I've read "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" more times than I can remember, and never tire of it. Nothing else in this volume is quite as memorable--there's a reason Jekyll and Hyde is his best-known work. But Stevenson is one of the great stylists of the English language, and the rest of the stories are just as superbly written. Many of the stories are comic, many are action-packed, and all are eminently enjoyable. I particularly like "The Bottle Imp" and "Will o'the Mill." The introduction by Barry Menikoff provides an appreciative analysis of Stevenson's work, and the notes to each story are helpful.

This edition is preferable to The Complete Short Stories Of Robert Louis Stevenson: With A Selection Of The Best Short Novels, edited by Charles Neider. The latter is a good bit more expensive, while inexplicably leaving out a number of stories.

Maybe I've misunderstood the meaning of "COMPLETE", but this collection does NOT contain KIDNAPPED or TREASURE ISLAND...so if you thought your were getting ALL of Stevenson's stories in this "The Complete Stories of...", think again...