1. Inspiration and writing

______________________________________
11 Possibly with the help of cocaine, according to William Gray's revisionist history Robert Louis Stevenson: A Literary Life (2004). ISBN 978-0-333-98400-
CONCLUSION
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, novella by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, published in 1886. The names of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the two alter egos of the main character, have become shorthand for the exhibition of wildly contradictory behaviour, especially between private and public selves.The tale—told largely from the perspective of Mr. Gabriel John Utterson, a London lawyer and friend of Dr. Henry Jekyll—begins quietly, with an urbane conversation between Utterson and his friend Mr. Richard Enfield. The latter tells how, returning home in the early hours of the morning, he witnessed a “horrible” incident: a small girl, running across the street, was trampled by a man named Mr. Edward Hyde, who left her screaming on the ground. After being caught, Hyde, who has a face that inspires loathing, agreed to pay the child’s family, and he retrieved from a dilapidated building a check from the account of a respected man. Enfield assumes that Hyde is blackmailing that man, whom Utterson knows to be his client Jekyll.Utterson has in his files a will in which Jekyll bequeaths everything to Hyde. Troubled, the lawyer visits Dr. Hastie Lanyon, a longtime friend of both Jekyll and Utterson. Lanyon says that he has seen little of Jekyll for more than 10 years, since Jekyll had gotten involved with “unscientific balderdash,” and that he does not know Hyde. Utterson waylays Hyde at the old building and introduces himself and then goes around to Jekyll’s house (the neglected building is a laboratory belonging to the house), only to learn from the butler, Poole, that Jekyll is not at home and that his servants have orders to obey Hyde.Almost a year later a maid witnesses Hyde beating to death a prominent gentleman who is also a client of Utterson’s. Utterson leads the police to Hyde’s home. Though he is absent, evidence of his guilt is clear. Utterson goes to see if Jekyll is harbouring Hyde, and Jekyll gives Utterson a letter from Hyde, in which Hyde declares that he will be able to escape. However, Utterson’s clerk notices that Jekyll and Hyde appear to have the same handwriting. Jekyll seems healthier and happier over the next few months but later starts refusing visitors. Utterson visits a dying Lanyon, who gives Utterson a document to be opened only after Jekyll’s death or disappearance. Weeks later, Poole requests that Utterson come to Jekyll’s home, as he is fearful that Hyde has murdered Jekyll. When Poole and Utterson break into the laboratory office, they find Hyde’s body on the floor and three documents for Utterson from Jekyll.
Lanyon’s and Jekyll’s documents reveal that Jekyll had secretly developed a potion to allow him to separate the good and evil aspects of his personality. He was thereby able at will to change into his increasingly dominant evil counterpart, Mr. Hyde. While the respectable doctor initially had no difficulty in returning from his rabid personality, he soon found himself slipping into Mr. Hyde without recourse to his drug. He temporarily stopped using his potion, but, when he tried it again, Mr. Hyde committed murder. After that, it took a vast amount of potion to keep him from spontaneously becoming Mr. Hyde. Unable to make any more of the drug because of an unknown but apparently crucial impurity in the original supply, Jekyll soon ran out of the drug. Indeed, he took the last of it to write a confession before becoming Hyde permanently.