This is a tale of political intrigue and romantic entanglement set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Left nearly complete at his death in 1894, St. Ives marks Stevenson's imaginative return to his native land in fiction. At once a rousing adventure tale and a challenging combination of romance, picaresque, and comic elements, the novel traces the fortunes of the dashing Jacques St. Ives, a French soldier in the Napoleonic wars, after his escape from imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle. St. Ives' flight across the Scottish and then the English countryside recalls Kidnapped, and indeed the novel rivals its famous predecessor in its brilliant storytelling. But its vision is darker, its hero older and less optimistic than young David Balfour. St. Ives is in part Stevenson's homage to the adventure tales of Walter Scott and Alexander Dumas, but at the same time Stevenson has re-imagined the world of adventure in the context of a disillusioning modernity. This first fully edited edition of the novel will provide a text closest to Stevenson's original conception of the novel. It includes as an appendix the ending to the novel written by Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1896.
Editor's introduction details the often painful yet sometimes exultant process of creation that Stevenson underwent during the composition of the novel. Textual essay provides a lucid overview of the complex textual situation of the novel, with manuscript scattered in multiple locations in both the UK and North America.