Robert Louis Stevenson

Kidnapped Annotated and Illustrated Edition by Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson began writing Kidnapped in March of 1885. In February, he had finished writing The Black Arrow and was working on The Great North Road when he read Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A month later, he put aside the The Great North Road and began writing Kidnapped. Shortly after, the project was laid aside while Stevenson focused on Jekyll and Hyde. He returned to Kidnapped in early 1886. During that year however, Stevenson had constantly thought of his character, David Balfour. In one of the letters Stevenson sent to his father, Stevenson wrote, "I am at David again, and have just murdered James Stewart semi-historically?"