The critics praise Kidnapped:

"While widely known and still read with great joy, Stevenson's novel, insists scholar Menikoff, has been unfairly relegated to young adult fiction. To remedy that, Menikoff has restored the text to its original form, reinstating deleted passages and reconstructing Stevenson's original punctuation. The text is buttressed with the same drawings that accompanied the story when serialized in the 19th century. In addition, Menikoff offers an introduction that explains the book's nexus and puts it into its Scottish cultural context. Undoubtedly one of the finest editions of Kidnapped ever offered."—Michael Rogers, Library Journal

"Though Stevenson's Kidnapped is less well known than Treasure Island, after reading Menikoff's well-written and cogently argued introduction to this new edition, many will agree with Stevenson himself that Kidnapped is his finest achievement. Why the need for a new edition? Stevenson's manuscripts were notoriously difficult to decipher. Using the autograph in the Huntington, Menikoff (Univ. of Hawaii) reproduces for the first time the actual text as Stevenson wrote it. To this text he appends two copies of sample autograph pages; substantive and informed commentary on the various stylistic components and language, the Scottish historical content, the realism, and the humor; and 32 pages of explanatory notes, a glossary, and even a gazetteer. Knowledgeable, brief, and to the point, these materials do not obtrude: the context and understanding Menikoff provides is precisely what both the general reader and the most serious Stevenson student would desire. As a result, this carefully researched and meticulously prepared volume offers readers the ultimate standard text that a novel with the reputation of Kidnapped deserves. Highly recommended for libraries for readers from the general public through researchers.—T. Loe, Choice

"In his broad-ranging illuminating introduction (itself a model of critical clarity and stylistic grace), Menikoff emphasizes both the mythic appeal of the novel and the "starkness of its realism." [He] makes a strong case for reexamining the so-called "children's classic" in the light in which it was received by Henry James and other early readers and critics—as a mature work of serious fiction.—Bill Jones, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

"Menikoff's edition of Kidnapped from the autograph manuscript in the Huntington Library is...revolutionary in its impact."—Alastair Fowler, Times Literary Supplement

"Menikoff...has found a way of enticing us to read [Stevenson] again."—Michael Harris, Los Angeles Times

Title Page, Manuscript, and Sample Illustration

The Huntington Library Press edition of Kidnapped is the first to transcribe the author's manuscript, with the original dialect and punctuation kept intact.

           Also included in this new version of Kidnapped
are several pages of Stevenson's original manuscript in facsimile.

The novel is illustrated throughout with reproductions of illustrations that first appeared in the 1886 British pulp weekly Young Folks.