Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour: 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
by Robert Louis Stevenson
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- Hardcover
- first
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About This Item
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a Scottish author best known for his novels Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Master of Ballantrae. Stevenson cast off his family profession of engineer and led a rather peripatetic, albeit sickly, life (he had tuberculosis), his final years spent in the South Seas, including Tahiti, Honolulu, Gilbert Islands, and Samoa, where he died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 44.
Stevenson was overpraised in his lifetime and immediately after his death, and has been considerably undervalued since. A series of collected editions bore witness to the popularity of his books with the general reader, but from the 1930s onwards he was ignored or patronized by academic critics as merely a writer for children. Slowly the tide has turned. He has been praised by modern writers and the critics are beginning to take him seriously again.
In recent decades, Stevensons reputation drastically appreciated as a writer of originality and power whose essays at their best are cogent and perceptive renderings of aspects of the human condition; whose novels are either brilliant adventure stories with subtle moral overtones or original and impressive presentations of human action in terms of history and topography as well as psychology; whose short stories produce some new and effective permutations in the relation between romance and irony or manage to combine horror and suspense with moral diagnosis (ODNB, Britannica).
Kidnapped is a historical fiction novel. The full title 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. Set during real 18th century Scottish events, notably the Jacobite uprising and the murder of Colin Roy Campbell, the government-appointed factor of the forfeited land of the Clan Steward of Appin, the book follows 17-year-old David Balfour, whose uncle attempts to bamboozle David out of his inheritance and sell him into slavery. While the main character is fictional, others are real, such as Colin Roy Campbell, and James Stewart (the man who was hanged for killing Campbell).
Synopsis
Considered one of Robert Louis Stevensn's best works, Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel, first published in Young Folks magazine from May to July 1886. The novel is considered a companion to Stevenson's Treasure Island. A Sequel, Catriona , was published in 1893. 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. The story is set around real 18th-century Scottish events, notably the "Appin murder", 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. Robert Louis Stevenson is the author of Kidnapped and The Children's Garden of Verses as well as the adult book, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde . During his short life Stevenson travelled the world from the South Pacific to the USA, Europe to Australia. He died at the age of 44 years old on a small Samoan island in the Pacific. -
Read More: Identifying first editions of Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour
Reviews
If ever a book's title clearly sketched its contents, it is Robert Louis Stevenson's full name for his 1886 novel "KIDNAPPED - BEING THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID BALFOUR: HOW HE WAS KIDNAPPED AND CAST AWAY; HIS SUFFERING IN A DESERT ISLE; HIS JOURNEY IN THE WEST 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." Phew! *** KIDNAPPED was an instant literary success. -- First, because it was about Scotland, both the author's native lowlands and the wild, mysterious, alien-language islands and highlands. It narrates a few warm weather months in 1751. -- Second, with both his parents now dead, late teens David Balfour is sent from the village where his father had been schoolmaster back "home" with a letter of introduction to his father's evil younger brother Ebenezer Balfour. Ebenezer is currently the miserly laird of Shaws, a dilapidated estate near Edinburgh. To prevent David from reclaiming his rights, uncle Ebenezer sells him to a greedy sea captain for later resale into servitude in South Carolina. -- Thirdly, at sea, sailing all around the top of Scotland from the east coast into the treacherous, rocky waters of the Inner Hebrides, David Balfour's life intersects with that of historically attested Alan Breck Stewart. Stewart is collecting money for Scottish losers in the 1745-46 rising, now living in impoverished exile in France with James Stewart, their "King across the water." *** After fighting off together an evil captain and crew, then shipwrecked and briefly parted off the west coast of Scotland, David and Alan pursue their now intertwined missions. Alan needs to get safely across enemy territory back to France with money that he has collected. David must return to the Firth of Forth to regain his inheritance. Each is of service to the other. Alan helps puritanical David become a man, teaches him swordcraft and the ways of the life-embracing Catholic highlands. *** Their story is told in later years by David Balfour himself, from the point of view of a sheltered adolescent lowlander, a Calvinist, a temperate and docile accepter of the political status quo in Scotland. David writes with both exasperation and deep affection about his meteoric and astonishingly opposite hero: a Catholic, the greatest swordsman of the Highlands, an unapologetic man of the world, a gambler who loses all David's money at cards playing with a Highland chief. Women and girls are few and far between. Romance barely flickers once toward tale's end as a brave girl rows the pair across the Firth of Forth to safety. David is frequently ill, very ill, a human condition, he notes in passing, that is rarely mentioned by writers of books for boys. ***On the surface KIDNAPPED is pure boys' adventure tale, complete with unrelenting chase over mountains and through the heather by King George's Redcoats who think -- erroneously -- that Alan, abetted by David, has murdered a high ranking, historically attested Scottish collaborator of King George. Here is a pair of moral and cultural opposites who do much good to each other. In 1886 author Stevenson had just read Mark Twain's THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN and it shows in KIDNAPPED. *** More deeply, KIDNAPPED is about an abnormally cruel period in Scottish-English history, told largely from the point of view of the gallant highland losers. KIDNAPPED is Robert Louis Stevenson's exploration of the divided Scottish psyche: highlands v. lowlands, Gaelic v. Scots as mutually incomprehensible languages, Catholicism v. Presbyterianism, Stewart Kings v. Hanoverians, agricultual mountain clans v. small nuclear retail trading nuclear families living between Glasgow and Edinburgh. This is not a profound book, but it is a very good one. And in pock-faced, diminutive, swashbuckling Alan Breck Stewart readers have a hero not soon forgotten. -OOO-
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Details
- Bookseller
- Churchill Book Collector (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 007130
- Title
- Kidnapped: Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour
- Author
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Format/Binding
- Full leather
- Book Condition
- Used
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First edition
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Publisher
- Cassell & Company, Limited
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1886
- Weight
- 0.00 lbs
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- Children & Juvenile Children’s Fiction & Literature
- Children & Juvenile Young Readers
- Fiction & Literature Action & Adventure
- Fiction & Literature Classic Literature
- Fiction & Literature Historical Fiction
- Fiction & Literature Individual Authors Robert Louis Stevenson
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