E X T E N S I O N GENESIS OF THE BOOK When he started to write the story, Stevenson was in Bournemouth, on the South coast of England, because he wanted to be near his father who was dying. Stevenson had tuberculosis and felt very weak1. He did not sleep well and had a lot of nightmares2. We know that The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde originated from one of these dreams. In those days Stevenson was thinking about the double that is in all human beings and one night he dreamt the scene at the window and another scene where Hyde was taking the drug. His step-son3, Lloyd Osborne, wrote in his book An Intimate Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson that when Stevenson woke up, he spoke of the dream: the following day he started working on a new story and did not want to be interrupted or disturbed. At the end of three days Stevenson read aloud to him and his mother the first version of the story. When he finished reading, Stevenson waited for his wife s reaction. She did not like it, and the writer was angry and unhappy. They started discussing and in the end the writer said that his wife was right and threw4 the manuscript into the fire. He wrote another version that took him six months. The novel was published in January 1886 and was immediately popular: it sold5 40,000 copies. R. L. Stevenson while writing The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. (Photographic negative and print by Lloyd Osbourne, 1885) 1. weak: not physically strong. 2. nightmare: a very bad dream. 3. step-son: the son of your husband or wife from a previous marriage. 4. threw (throw-threw-thrown): sent it through the air with force by a sudden movement of the arm. 5. sold (sell-sold-sold): when you sell something, you give an object to someone and receive money in return. 14