Kidnapped

Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886. Kidnapped is an historical fiction adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, written as a "boys' novel" and first published in the magazine Young Folks in 1886. The novel has attracted the praise and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges, and Hilary Mantel. Kidnapped/ is set around 18th-century Scottish events, notably the "Appin Murder", which occurred near Ballachulish in 1752 in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745. Many of the characters were 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. Robert Louis Stevension (1850-1894). Though the originality and power of Stevenson’s writings was recognised from the first by a select few, it was only slowly that he caught the ear of the general public. The tide may be said to have turned with the publication of Treasure Island in 1882, which at once gave him an assured place among the foremost imaginative writers of the day. His greatest power is, however, shown in those works which deal with Scotland in the 18th century, such as Kidnapped, and in those, e.g., The Child’s Garden of Verse which exhibit his extraordinary insight into the psychology of child-life. Stevenson’s style is singularly fascinating, graceful, various, subtle, and with a charm all its own.