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Cover of Kidnapped

Kidnapped

Robert L Stevenson

Summary

Published in 1886, the same year as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , Kidnapped is one of Stevenson’s most enduringly popular novels. At its centre is a historical event: the murder of Colin Campbell, the ‘Red Fox’ of Glenure in Scotland. The fiction that is developed around this event involves the child David Balfour whose father dies leaving his son with nothing to live on. David goes to live with his uncle Ebenezer. Ebenezer is a cruel and miserly individual. As a result of the illegality of his acquisition of the Balfour estate he instigates a series of malicious manoeuvres against David. Firstly he attempts to have the boy killed and then has him kidnapped. So David finds himself on a ship to the Carolinas accompanied by Alan Breck, an ‘honest gentleman’ and Jacobite. As fate would have it, the ship is wrecked on the rocks at Mull. The novel then follows David and Alan as they journey across the Highlands through numerous dangers and after witnessing and becoming suspects in the murder of Colin Campbell. The novel concludes with resolution, but the continuing Colin Campbell murder case and the later actions and romance of David are the subjects of Kidnapped ’s sequel, Catriona (1893).

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