Where to Start with Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Jekyll and Hyde, or a Walk

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a pirate story, a Highland chase, a London horror, and a travel diary about a donkey, all within a few years. Readers who know one of them often assume the others are more of the same and never try them. In fact the four books differ in length, voice, and pace, and the right first one depends on what you want from an evening.

This guide takes the four best-known works available on Project Gutenberg and describes how each begins, how it is built, and what to pay attention to. It does not retell the plots, and it says nothing about how any of them end. If you already know the central idea of Jekyll and Hyde from its title, the section on that book explains why reading it is still worth your time.

Treasure Island: the clearest entry

The narrator is Jim Hawkins, who explains in his first sentence that Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the other gentlemen have asked him to write down the whole story of Treasure Island, keeping nothing back except the bearings of the island itself. From there he goes back to the Admiral Benbow inn, which his father kept, and the arrival of a brown old seaman with a sabre cut.¹

The book is divided into six parts and thirty-four short chapters, each with a title that tells you where you are: “The Old Buccaneer,” “The Sea-cook,” “My Shore Adventure,” and so on. The chapters average only a few pages, so the novel is easy to read in short sittings and easy to resume.

One structural surprise is worth knowing in advance so it does not read as an error. For three chapters in Part Four the narration passes from Jim to the Doctor, and the chapter titles say so. Notice how the voice changes and what the Doctor sees that Jim cannot. The book is a plain adventure, but it is also a careful piece of storytelling about who knows what, and when.

Kidnapped: Scotland, 1751, and a voice to settle into

Kidnapped is also told by its young hero, David Balfour, and the full title describes it as his memoirs of the year 1751. The dedication to Charles Baxter admits that the book plays loose with some historical dates and that a real event, the Appin murder, has been moved to fit the story. Stevenson is telling you upfront that this is fiction set against real history, not a history lesson.²

There are thirty chapters, and their titles are written in David’s own first person: “I Set Off upon My Journey to the House of Shaws,” “I Come to My Journey’s End.” Reading down the table of contents gives you the route of the book without giving away what happens on it.

The main adjustment is language. Much of the dialogue is in Scots, and words such as “ken” appear constantly. As with dialect anywhere, the sentences are easier heard than parsed. Read a page of conversation at speaking pace before deciding whether it is a barrier. Most readers find that it stops being one within a chapter or two, and that it becomes part of the book’s pleasure.

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: short, and not what the title suggests

Almost everyone knows the premise, and that is exactly why the book is worth reading rather than remembering. It is short, and it is not told from the inside. The first section, “Story of the Door,” begins with Mr. Utterson, a dry London lawyer, and the whole case is approached through what he and his acquaintances see, hear, and are told.³

The ten sections have titles rather than numbers, and the last two are documents: “Dr. Lanyon’s Narrative” and “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case.” That arrangement means the explanation arrives late, and arrives in someone’s own words. Even if you know the famous idea, you do not know how the text gets there or what it says about why.

Read it in one or two sittings if you can. The pleasure lies in the fog, the locked doors, the respectable men who are not sure what they are allowed to ask, and the mounting unease of a lawyer who would rather not know. Several of the section titles include words such as “murder” and “incident”; the book is a horror story in a quiet key, not an action tale.

Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes: Stevenson in his own voice

If you would rather meet the author than a narrator, start here. Travels with a Donkey is an account of a solitary walking tour in the mountains of southern France. It opens in a small town called Le Monastier, where Stevenson spends a month before setting out, and it includes the purchase of a donkey he names Modestine. His relationship with her is the running comedy of the book.⁴

The text is arranged in four parts named for regions: Velay, Upper Gevaudan, Our Lady of the Snows, and the Country of the Camisards. Within them are short titled sections, some only a page or two, such as “A Camp in the Dark” and “A Night among the Pines.” It is the easiest of the four books to read in fragments, and the best one for a reader who enjoys landscape, weather, and the small practical troubles of travel.

The third part describes a stay at a Trappist monastery, and the fourth passes through country shaped by a Protestant uprising two centuries earlier. Stevenson’s observations on religion and politics are frank and personal. They are also brief, and they sit beside long passages of simple delight at being outdoors.

Which one fits your evening?

Treasure Island is the natural first novel. Jekyll and Hyde is the quickest complete book and a good test of whether you like Stevenson’s prose when nothing is being chased. Kidnapped rewards readers who liked Treasure Island and want more weight. Travels with a Donkey is for anyone who would rather walk than sail.

Read the chapter titles, then the chapters

Stevenson’s adventure novels have unusually informative tables of contents. Before beginning Treasure Island or Kidnapped, read the list of chapter titles once. It will not spoil the books, because the titles name places and situations rather than outcomes, but it will give you a map, and a map makes it easier to stop and restart.

Both novels also move through many named locations, ships, and households. You do not need to hold all of them in mind. At each stopping point, note where the narrator is and who is with him. That is enough to pick the thread up again. For more adventure fiction of the same era, see classic adventure novels.

Content note

Treasure Island and Kidnapped contain violence, including deaths in fights and a killing that is central to the plot of Kidnapped. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde includes a murder and sustained psychological dread. Travels with a Donkey includes rough treatment of the donkey, which Stevenson describes with discomfort but does not disguise, and frank remarks about Catholic and Protestant communities. The period vocabulary in all four books is mostly plain by the standards of its time.

How to read these on BlueReader

Each footnote below links to the Project Gutenberg page where you can download an EPUB. Upload the file to BlueReader and wait for the server to process it, then open it from your bookshelf. The short chapters of Treasure Island suit reading on a phone in odd minutes, and your position carries across devices.⁵

If the Mississippi appeals more than the Scottish coast, the companion guide to Mark Twain pairs well with this one; Twain and Stevenson were near contemporaries, and Treasure Island and Huckleberry Finn appeared within two years of each other.