Eight reasons why you should get to know Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Gothic horror story Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is coming to Radio 4. It's a new version by Neil Brand who also provides the music. The story has such a reputation that it has been parodied by everyone from Abbott and Costello to the American comedy animation, Phineas and Ferb.

The chilling tale of the ultimate split personality has an almost zombie-like primal fear attached to it – namely the possibility that humans can be overtaken by urges they can’t control and aren't even aware of.

David Hemmings in an adaptation of the novel for BBC TV.

The story offered Stevenson's readers in the 1880s a visceral thrill: the chance to marvel at man in his true, base state, struggling to control himself in a civilised world.

More reasons to listen? OK… not that you need 'em…

1. I had a dream

Robert Louis Stevenson, who was recuperating in Bournemouth from a bout of the killer disease tuberculosis, dreamed up the story in a nightmare, induced by the cocaine he had been prescribed for the condition. He was writhing in terror on the bed: his wife Fanny woke him and he exclaimed, crossly, "Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey-tale."

2. Mind what you eat

Stevenson may have drawn further inspiration from the murder trial of his French doctor friend, Eugene Chantrelle. Chantrelle poisoned his wife with opium and Stevenson, who attended the trial, was astonished at the behaviour of this man he’d respected and befriended. The trial also revealed that Chantrelle may have murdered others with a rather prosaic dinner party menu of toasted cheese and opium.

3. Burn after reading

The version of the story we have is the second: Stevenson showed the first, written in three days while ill in bed, to Fanny, who criticised it for not getting across its moral allegory adequately – so he burned it. Fanny was horrified when she realised what he’d done: it took him six weeks to rewrite.

4. Reading between the lines

The novella has been seen as everything from a gay allegory to a criticism of the Church.

5. Mean streets

Even the city of Edinburgh itself, Stevenson’s birthplace, has been described as “of split personality”, making it the ideal setting. Dr Jekyll frequents the Georgian, respectable, civilised areas of Edinburgh whereas Mr Hyde stalks the poverty-stricken medieval slums.

6. Penny for your thoughts

Stevenson himself described the work to a correspondent in 1885 as “a penny dreadful. It is dam dreadful”.

7. Coincidence or what?

In 1888, a stage play of the novella opened and two days later Jack the Ripper carried out his first attack. A censorious public thought there may have been a link.

David Tennant

8. And that's not all...

Radio 4's suspenseful adaptation on Saturday 19 November stars Stuart McQuarrie as Henry Jekyll and John Dougall as Edward Hyde. If all this isn’t enough to make you want to listen, the introduction features the authentic voice of the wonderful David Tennant, who explains why the play is set in Edinburgh’s dark and rainy streets, rather than the original's London. Go on. Make yourself a nice potion and settle down for a creepy Autumn chiller...