Views from 1886

I've started collecting contemporary reviews of Kidnapped, which it turns out is going to be a bigger project than I anticipated, because there are way more of them than there were for Flight of the Heron. Stevenson was a more famous author than Broster!

However, I thought I'd share this one with you now, as those of you who enjoyed Country Life's review of FotH will surely appreciate what the St. James's Gazette (19 July 1886) had to say about Kidnapped:

It is high praise, therefore, of this new volume to say that it is no unworthy companion of “Treasure Island.” Its incidents are not so uniformly thrilling; there is no touch of art in it quite equal to the account of the blind sailor’s visit to the country inn in the former story; yet Kidnapped is excellent from end to end. Two characteristics of Mr. Stevenson’s last volume are in themselves worthy of notice. The first, that, as in “Treasure Island,” he has succeeded in telling a story in which women and feminine influence play positively no part. There is no love-making in “Kidnapped,” and, with one exception, no woman takes any share in the action. There are some pretty and touching passages illustrative of the unspoken love of man for man which has been a finer side of human intercourse since the days of David and Jonathan. But of the conventional heroine and the yet more conventional love scene, which are wont to appear even in so-called books for boys, Mr. Stevenson will have none.

(excerpted from a longer review—the great length of several of the reviews compared to the ones for FotH is another notable thing!)

The lack of a conventional 'love-story' is a point several of the reviewers touch on—usually in a tone of 'huh, that's unusual' in amongst a generally glowing review rather than as actual criticism. In fact, most of the reviews are generally glowing, the worst they have to say being that it's not quite as good as Treasure Island—a unanimity which evidently inspired this amusing meta-review from The County Gentleman Sporting Gazette and Cultural Journal, 24 July 1886:

The gentle critics who write up the works of Mr. Louis Stevenson mean well in their columns of St. James’s and their leaders of St. Lucy. “Kidnapped” is a delightful story. There are degrees of compliments in criticism, but Mr. Stevenson’s friends invariably indulge in superlatives till their adjectives are exhausted. And the result is that the reader may possibly be inclined to look for too much. “Kidnapped” is, to my mind, more enthralling than “Treasure Island.” The Mutual Admiration Society have decided that it is not. But they wallow in ecstatic columns all the same. “Kidnapped” is published at a crown. Every person who goes a-holiday-making ought to take a copy with him.

And even that still manages to end up as a favourable review of the actual book!