On this day in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped began serialization in Young Folks magazine. Although begun "partly as a lark, partly as a potboiler," Kidnapped was an instant and huge hit; taken with the earlier Treasure Island (1883) and A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), it established Stevenson as one of England's most popular writers of "Children's Literature." The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, provoked by a dream and written in a ten-week burst during the writing of Kidnapped, was also published during this period ... FULL STORY »
