Fiction · 1886
Kidnapped
In 1751, after his father’s death, young David Balfour goes to claim his inheritance from an uncle who has him kidnapped and shipped off for the Carolinas. A wreck on the west coast of Scotland, a Highland outlaw named Alan Breck Stewart, and a flight across the heather through the aftermath of the Jacobite rising follow.
Robert Louis Stevenson published the book in 1886, the same year as Jekyll and Hyde. It is built on real events — the Appin murder of 1752 — and real landscape.
The volume opens with Stevenson’s own dedication to his friend Charles Baxter; the thirty chapters follow complete.
Contents
- Dedication — My Dear Charles Baxter:
- Chapter I — I Set Off Upon My Journey to the House of Shaws
- Chapter II — I Come to My Journey’s End
- Chapter III — I Make Acquaintance of My Uncle
- Chapter IV — I Run a Great Danger in the House of Shaws
- Chapter V — I Go to the Queen’s Ferry
- Chapter VI — What Befell at the Queen’s Ferry
- Chapter VII — I Go to Sea in the Brig Covenant of Dysart
- Chapter VIII — The Round-House
- Chapter IX — The Man with the Belt of Gold
- Chapter X — The Siege of the Round-House
- Chapter XI — The Captain Knuckles Under
- Chapter XII — I Hear of the “Red Fox”
- Chapter XIII — The Loss of the Brig
- Chapter XIV — The Islet
- Chapter XV — The Lad with the Silver Button: Through the Isle of Mull
- Chapter XVI — The Lad with the Silver Button: Across Morven
- Chapter XVII — The Death of the Red Fox
- Chapter XVIII — I Talk with Alan in the Wood of Lettermore
- Chapter XIX — The House of Fear
- Chapter XX — The Flight in the Heather: The Rocks
- Chapter XXI — The Flight in the Heather: The Heugh of Corrynakiegh
- Chapter XXII — The Flight in the Heather: The Moor
- Chapter XXIII — Cluny’s Cage
- Chapter XXIV — The Flight in the Heather: The Quarrel
- Chapter XXV — In Balquhidder
- Chapter XXVI — End of the Flight: We Pass the Forth
- Chapter XXVII — I Come to Mr. Rankeillor
- Chapter XXVIII — I Go in Quest of My Inheritance
- Chapter XXIX — I Come Into My Kingdom
- Chapter XXX — Good-Bye
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Part of Adventure.
Source mind
About the author
1850–1894 · Victorian
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was born in Edinburgh into a family of lighthouse engineers, trained in law, and turned to writing travel essays and stories. Treasure Island (1883), A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885), Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) and Kidnapped (1886) made him famous. In poor health all his life, he travelled in search of a climate he could bear and settled in 1890 in Samoa, where he died at forty-four.
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