Kidnapped by robert louis stevenson facts

I have a bone to pick with people who want to talk about “young adult” books.  To me, this has more to do with the need of a bookstore, say, or a library to categorize and organize volumes, and less to do with the books themselves and their audience.

Kidnapped, published in 1886 by Robert Lewis Stevenson, is a classic in that category, described as a “boy’s novel” or a “boy’s adventure.” 

It is a proto-“young adult” novel about the kidnapping of an 18-year-old Scottish boy, David Balfour, for sale into slavery in the American colonies.  He undergoes great hardships and threats to his life as he struggles his way back to win his inheritance, meeting several historical figures including the irrepressible Scottish rebel Alan Breck Stewart.  The two spend much of the novel being hunted, and they become close friends.

Kidnapped is a rollicking tale that, yes, has beguiled generations of boys.  Yet, the fact is that girls can find — and have found — the book fascinating.  Adults too.

The late Hilary Mantel, author of esteemed historical fiction, including the immensely popular trilogy of novels centering on the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII, told the Guardian in 2005 that she was enthralled by the Stevenson novel as an eight-year-old.

“It made a lot of sense, when Davie finds himself marooned in the wild country, where the previous rules don’t obtain. I just knew this was what a story should be like. It was the model that was always in my head. Stevenson takes the reader by a short route from one point of suspense to the next. Even as a very small and unsophisticated reader I understood the perils Davie was entering into.”

Henry James was captivated by the book, particularly Alan Breck Stewart whom he described as “the most perfect character in English literature.”   Other adult fans of the book and of Stevenson hav

“Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson is a book I’ve got a nostalgic fondness for – despite never having read it until very recently.

I’ve always been a fan of “adventure” novels. When I was little, I used to live on a diet of cosy Enid Blyton tales about precocious children and various animal companions, before graduating to Willard Price’s “Adventure” series, set in exotic climes all across the world.

Jolly good 1950s fun all round!

But there was one story above all that fascinated me. Thing is, I’d only read one paragraph of it. (During a typing exercise, of all things.)

This paragraph was so enthralling that I had to get myself a copy of “Kidnapped”.

It was the betrayal of my young life when I didn’t enjoy it one bit. I gave up a few chapters in.

However, over the years I’ve read other things by Robert Louis Stevenson. I particularly enjoyed his short gothic tales, such as “The Body Snatcher” (inspired by Burke and Hare) and the curious vampire tale “Olalla”.

So, I finally decided to revisit “Kidnapped”.

The beginning of a swashbuckling adventure . . .

The novel opens with David Balfour, setting off on a journey to his family’s ancestral home at Cramond, just outside of Edinburgh. The House of Shaws and its lone inhabitant, Uncle Ebenezer, are odd and unwelcoming – as you might expect!

Davie soon begins to get the distinct impression that his uncle is plotting against him. Sure enough, after a bit of nefarious trickery, he finds himself unwittingly taken to sea on board the Covenant, with its rag-tag crew of miscreants.

Luckily for David, the next accidental acquisition to the crew is the Jacobite Alan Breck Stewart. He’s taken aboard after the Covenant mistakenly sinks his ship.

Together, Alan and David over turn a murder plot, and embark on a series of swashbuckling adventures together, as their journey leads them back across Scotland – as both men have scores to settle.

First published in 1886, Kidnapped is Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Scottish adventure set in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite uprising, telling the story of the kidnap of David Balfour and his subsequent journey across Scotland on foot, with Alan Breck between 27 June and 25 August 1751. This journey, pursued by redcoats, was the basis for our December 2002 proposal for a Stevenson Way described elsewhere on Undiscovered Scotland.

In 1893 Stevenson, by now resident in Samoa, published Catriona, which takes up the story of David Balfour's adventures where Kidnapped leaves off, amply making up for what some feel to be a rather rushed ending to this first novel. The full text of Catriona is also available on Undiscovered Scotland

Like other eBooks whose texts are reproduced on Undiscovered Scotland, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson is long out of copyright. What sets the Undiscovered Scotland version apart is the cross linking between the text of the book and features elsewhere on the site, allowing the reader to explore beyond the text itself, finding out more about the places and people mentioned.

Kidnapped: Full Chapter List

1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson

Kidnapped is a historical fictionadventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, written as a boys' novel and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886. The novel has attracted the praise and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges, and Hilary Mantel. A sequel, Catriona, was published in 1893.

The narrative is written in English with some dialogue in Lowland Scots, a Germanic language that evolved from an earlier incarnation of English.

Kidnapped is set around real 18th-century Scottish events, notably the "Appin Murder" and the Highland Clearances, which occurred in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Many of the characters are real people, including one of the principals, Alan Breck Stewart. The political situation of the time is portrayed from multiple viewpoints, and the Scottish Highlanders are treated sympathetically.

The full title of the book is Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his Sufferings in a Desert Isle; His Journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called: Written by Himself and now set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Plot

The novel opens in Essendean in Edinburgh in 1751 with the main character and narrator 17-year-old David Balfour. His parents have recently died, and he is out to make his way in the world. He is given a letter by a family friend, a minister of Essendean named Mr. Campbell, to be delivered to his family's ancestral estate, the House of Shaws in Cramond. David hopes that the letter will allow him to obtain financial assistance from his only living relative – his uncle Ebenezer.

David arrives at the ominous House of