Name: Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

Sketch of the Cruise of the Brig 'Covenant' and the Probable Course of David Balfour's Wanderings

In this first edition, the foldout map is attached to the front boards, and focuses on the West Highlands, with an inset of the entire Scottish coast. Stevenson writes: ‘a red line is to show the wanderings of my hero [. . .] It must be sometimes dotted to show uncertainty.’ The map is of a Scotland of a century before, now vanished. As well as a tale of adventure and derring-do, it is also one of nostalgia for a vanished age: ‘Stevenson composed his fiction so that he could vicariously wind his way through the landscape of home. To do this he relied upon the abstracted space of maps.

Ex Carta

The folding map frontispiece to Kidnapped charts David Balfour’s wanderings across the Scottish Highlands. It anchors Stevenson’s tale of survival and identity in a vividly realised and romantic national geography.

Stolen away and then shipwrecked, David Balfour heads for home through unfamiliar lands. The hero of Kidnapped is thus an explorer as well as the reader’s guide. But given his dual role, it is a question whether he knows where he is going. (

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) began work on 

 magazine from May to July 1886, appearing in book form later that same year. The historical novel is closely associated with Scotland: popularised by Walter Scott (1771–1832), it continued to flourish in the later nineteenth century in the work of Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, and John Buchan, and in the twentieth century in that of Dorothy Dunnett (1923–2001).

Set in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, 

 is a novel of geographical and moral navigation, and Cassell’s frontispiece map makes plain the Scottish Highlands’ place as integral to the story, driving much of its plot and providing much of its distinctive character. However, although it provides a topography, it also creates mystery: ‘Stevenson helpfully insisted on a map for David’s travels, yet that map fails to place our Davie' (McKracken-Flesher, 2022).

In this first edition, the foldout map is attached to the front boards, and focuses on the West Highlands, with an inset of the entire Scottish coast. Stevenson writes: ‘a red line is to show the wanderings of my hero [. . .] It must be sometimes dotted to show uncertainty.’ The map is of a Scotland of a century before, now vanished.

As well as a tale of adventure and derring do, it is also one of nostalgia for a vanished age: ‘Stevenson composed his fiction so that he could vicariously wind his way through the landscape of home. To do this he relied upon the abstracted space of maps (Colley, 1998).