A Study Guide for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

"There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people. - Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped Kidnapped (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson is a coming-of-age novel that recounts the adventures of a teenager named David Balfour during the Jacobite Rebellions in 18th century Scotland. Following his father's death, David reaches out to an uncle, who betrays his nephew and sells him to a slave-trader headed for America. David's rescue from the slave ship by a Jacobite refugee starts David on a series of adventures that ensure his passage into manhood.

In "Kidnapped" (1886) and later fiction such as "The Master of Ballantrae" (1888), Stevenson examined some of the extreme and contrary currents of Scotland's past, often projecting a dualism of both personality and belief. This dualism is most famous in "Kidnapped", whose two central characters are David Balfour, a Lowland Whig, and Alan Breck Stewart, a Highland Jacobite. The novel revolves around their friendship and their differences, suggesting a metaphor for Scotland itself. Stevenson wrote the sequel "Catriona" with the title David Balfour, but during serialisation in England the public became confused, thinking it might be a reprint of "Kidnapped". At publisher Cassell's request, the title was changed to "Catriona", after Balfour's daughter.

A Study Guide for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Kidnapped," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

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Narrating Scotland traces the Scottish writer's weaving together of source material from memoirs, letters, histories, and records of trials. Barry Menikoff uncovers the documentary basis for reading Kidnapped and David Balfour as political allegories and reveals the skill with which Stevenson offered a narrative that British colonizers could enjoy without being offended by its underlying condemnation.

Kidnapped was written as a boys' novel and was first published in Young Folks magazine in 1886. It is an historical fiction story set in Scotland and written in English with some Lowland Scot dialogue.