Material Romance: Kidnapped In and Out of Young Folks Paper

This essay proposes that the serial publication of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (1886) in Young Folks Paper presents a vision of Highland and Hebrides Scotland that is similar to colonial locales featured in imperial-romantic adventure narratives. It explores the different reading experiences enabled by the serial and volume editions with regard to the text’s genre, narrative trajectory, and material conditions. In so doing, it illuminates how William Boucher’s illustrations for Young Folks Paper work in concert with Stevenson’s text to present an entertaining adventure tale that is also an indictment of English rule of Highland Scottish lands and peoples.