Kidnapped

Front Cover
Collector's Library, 2009 - Fiction - 318 pages
Set in Scotland in 1751, Kidnapped tells of how young David Balfour, orphaned, and betrayed by his uncle Ebenezer who should have been his guardian, is kidnapped, and falls in with Alan Breck, the unscrupulous but heroic champion of the Jacobite cause. The novel revolves around their friendship and their differences, suggesting a metaphor for Scotland itself. Modern critics see the novel as more than a boy's adventure yarn; at the heart of it lies what Henry James described as the 'really excellent' chapters of the flight in the heather that raise the novel to greatness. The illustrations by William Hole are from the first edition, with an Afterword by Ned Halley.
 

Contents

I Set off upon My Journey to the House of Shaws
17
I Come to My Journeys End
22
I Make Acquaintance of My Uncle
31
I Run a Great Danger in the House of Shaws
39
I Go to the Queens Ferry
51
What Befell at the Queens Ferry
58
I Go to Sea in the Brig Covenant of Dysart
64
The Roundhouse
75
I Talk with Alan in the Wood of Lettermore
171
The House of Fear
181
The Flight in the Heather The Rocks
189
The Flight in the Heather The Heugh of Corrynakiegh
203
The Flight in the Heather The Moor
212
Clunys Cage
223
The Flight in the Heather The Quarrel
235
In Balquhidder
247

The Man with the Belt of Gold
81
The Siege of the Roundhouse
94
The Captain Knuckles Under
104
I Hear of the Red Fox
109
The Loss of the Brig
120
The Islet
129
The Lad with the Silver Button Through the Isle of Mull
141
The Lad with the Silver Button Across Morven
153
The Death of the Red Fox
162
End of the Flight We Pass the Forth
257
I Come to Mr Rankeillor
270
I Go in Quest of My Inheritance
281
I Come to My Kingdom
290
Goodbye
300
Afterword
307
Biography
317
Further Reading
318
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, the only son of an engineer, Thomas Stevenson. Despite a lifetime of poor health, Stevenson was a keen traveller, and his first book An Inland Voyage (1878) recounted a canoe tour of France and Belgium. In 1880, he married an American divorcee, Fanny Osbourne, and there followed Stevenson's most productive period, in which he wrote, amongst other books, Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped (both 1886). In 1888, Stevenson left Britain in search of a more salubrious climate, settling in Samoa, where he died in 1894.

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