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Stevenson was a writer whose precise attention to minute detail was recognized long before he became an international star. Yet despite the prodigious Stevenson archives in the United States and Scotland, there is surprisingly little hard evidence on how his manuscripts became printed books. We know from anecdotal remarks that he was intensely conscious of the process and extremely vigilant in demanding that the compositors and proofreaders follow his copy. A candid obituary in the Aberdeen Journal provides a telling example of his attitude:

Stevenson’s handwriting was a horror to typewriters and compositors, yet he was a most particular man about his proofs, and grew very irate and sarcastic on the subject of typographical errors. His readers must have noticed that he was most accurate and systematic in his punctuation. In spite of the fact that it was often impossible for the unhappy compositor to distinguish between a comma and a period, a capital and a small letter, on the MS., nothing annoyed the author so much as a mistake of the kind. (18 December 1894)

That so pointed an observation could be made in a remote Scottish newspaper strongly suggests that the complexities of working with Stevenson’s autographs were common knowledge to the wider Grub Street world, as indeed they were to his closer connections. E. L. Burlingame, Stevenson’s longstanding editor at Scribner’s, illustrated the writer’s combative- ness during the composing process: “I have tried in vain to find a corrected proof-sheet, for these were very characteristic. Occasionally he would put sportive addresses on the side to the proof-reader, now and then extremely caustic ones—one especially that I think the reader cut off and kept to nurse animosity upon, for I have never seen it since” (untitled address, November 13, 1900; Anson Burlingame Papers, Library of Congress).

This edition of Kidnapped is based on the autograph manuscript in the Huntington Library (HM 2410). It reproduces for the first time Stevenson’s text as he wrote it. The extant holograph, constituting chapters 1 through 27, is in places heavily revised, in others clear and fluent. Given the heavy use of the holograph during the production of the book—editorial queries in the margins that sent the pages back to Stevenson for response—the document itself is in relatively good condition. Not the pristine condition of his later holographs, to be sure, but then Kidnapped was written before every scrap from Stevenson’s hand was saved as if it were holy writ or precious metal. For me, working with the manuscript was a privilege as much as a labor. Stevenson’s handwriting, cramped and tiny though it is, has a kind of elegance to it, and in time the eye accommodates the quirks of his hand, and the ear becomes familiar with the voice that moves the script. No one can come away from studying the manuscript without deep admiration for Stevenson’s intensity of concentration and the shading and polish he exerted on even the smallest vision or revision. In following the autograph this edition acknowledges the broadest range of Stevenson’s artistic intentions.

Punctuation and capitalization. Stevenson wrote for the ear, he punctuated by ear, and he often capitalized by ear. His system of punctuation, while initially odd-looking, sounds quite natural when “read” audibly. At times individual compositors for the periodical Young Folks and the first English edition punctiliously followed Stevenson’s text; but in the main they altered and regularized the punctuation. For this edition only minor emendations to the original punctuation were necessary: missing periods and quotation marks were added, and apostrophes were introduced or emended. Capitalization was a more complicated matter. As the Aberdeen newspaper noted, Stevenson’s capitals were often indistinguishable from his small letters. But his use of them was deliberate and purposeful. King, for example, is declaimed by Alan Breck with a kind of a swagger, as he repeatedly reminds David that he “bears a King’s name,” with a capital K. On the other hand, whig is rarely uttered without a sneer, or written with anything but a small letter. This edition restores Stevenson’s capitals and small letters to their original form.

Spelling and compounds. Stevenson read capaciously in older books, and his spelling was a by-product of that reading. It might reflect the period of the novel (burthen in place of burden); it was occasionally archaic (Glascow) and frequently Scots (muir rather than moor). I have retained all the forms that have linguistic authority, while clear spelling errors have been corrected (murmurred, but for butt, dizy). One spelling matter needs separate comment: Stevenson was unvarying in writing nieghbour, niether, siezed, and Lieth. Although this habit drove Sidney Colvin to carp constantly about his friend’s weakness in orthography, it is plausible that for Stevenson there was an aural basis for the spelling. But these words are so rife that I have emended them in order to avoid obtruding their (mis)spelling on the reader. In the matter of compound words and hyphenation, Stevenson’s practice was more modern than the compositors’. He used fewer hyphens, preferring either to compound or to write two words rather than one. Here, too, we can see him “speaking” the word in his mind and compounding or not depending upon the breath or pause between the two words. Occasionally he inserted a hyphen after the prefixes mis (mis-chief) and dis (disappointment), another sign that he used accidental marks to serve an oral and dramatic style. Of course, in a handwritten novel of nearly one hundred thousand words he was not always consistent (redcoats, red coats, red-coats), and I have not attempted to impose consistency on him.

From “I Run a Great Danger in the House of Shaws,” Kidnapped. Holograph, p. 22.

Language. The subject of Kidnapped, to borrow a smart conceit from Vladimir Nabokov, is Stevenson’s love affair with the Scots and English languages. There is not room enough here to analyze the linguistic differences between Stevenson’s manuscript and the serial and first book editions, but they are substantial and significant. Words on the holograph were deleted or altered, and others not there were added. From simple misreadings to deliberate revisions, from small changes in vocabulary to the elimination or recasting of sentences, the printed editions represent major departures from Stevenson’s handwritten text. The changes bore particularly on his deliberate and pervasive use of Scots. The dialectal syntax was modified to make it more correct (“a bit fun” or “a bit pressure” was changed to “a bit of fun”), or a Scots diminutive was read as an authorial error (awhilie to awhile), or small Scots words were turned into English ones (weel to well, twa to two). In two cases important words were dropped altogether, because they were either too hard to decipher or incomprehensible or both (allenarly, notour). But it would be a mistake to think that it was simply the unfamiliar or even more uncomfortable Scots that was the source of the problem. For Stevenson’s English was corrected as well. Whether it was squeamishness (“nurse the bairn” became keep) or delicacy (“traded upon her innocence” became ignorance), whether it was insensitivity to poetic shading (“a few lights showed” was changed to shone) or just a dull and common ear (sparking to sparkling), the revisions plane the contours and coarsen the surfaces of Stevenson’s style. These changes—and some few may well have been Stevenson’s own revisions between the serial and book publications—were not the result of arrogant or supercilious compositors (although the editor of Young Folks might fall into that category) so much as the consequence of a production practice that authorized the makers of books to aid and improve the writers. But Stevenson was one of those rare authors who needed little if any assistance, and never was an apprentice to anyone but himself.

This edition restores all the language of the holograph. Stevenson’s hand makes it a judgment call to distinguish further from farther. And two words were problematic. “I looked, too, at the seamen with the skiff; big, [] fellows” (p. 51). Young Folks and Cassell both print brown, but the word could plausibly be read as braw. I have, however, followed the printed texts. The other word proved indecipherable. The sentence reads: “Presently, he [] towards me sideways, but keeping his eyes away” (p. 37). Both serial and book print: “Presently, he looked towards me sideways,” and then delete the remainder of the sentence. I have printed the word as walked.

From “The Siege of the Round-House,” Kidnapped. Holograph, p. 59.

Since the Huntington Library holograph is incomplete, ending with chapter 27, I have based the last three chapters of this edition on the Young Folks Paper serial. Minor emendations have been made to that copytext, in accordance with Stevenson’s practice in the autograph: periods were dropped after the courtesy title (“Mr”), hyphens removed in seven words, and one spelling change made (blythe for blithe).