# Kidnapped (Stevenson, 1887)

Kidnapped was originally issued serially in Young Folks, vol. xxviii. pp. 273-275, 289-291, 305-307, 321-323, 337-339, 353-355, 369-371, 385-387, 401-403; vol. xxix. pp. 1-3, 17-19, 33-35, 49-51, 68 (May 1 to July 13, 1886). It first appeared in book form in the same year. This transcription is of the first illustrated edition, published in 1887.
—Based on A Bibliography of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (1903), by William Francis Prideaux
KIDNAPPED,
BEING
Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour
IN THE YEAR 1751:
How he was Kidnapped and Cast away ; his Sufferings in a Desert Isle; his Journey in the Wild Highlands ; his Acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called: Written by Himself, and now set forth
BY
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
illustrated edition.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE. MDCCCLXXXVII.
[All Rights Reserved.]
BY THE SAME AUTHOR,
An Inland Voyage. Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes. Travels with a Donkey. Virgisibus Puerisque. Familiar Studies of Men and Books. New Arabian Nights. Treasure Island. The Silverado Squatters. A Child's Garden Of Verses. Prince Otto. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
(With Mrs. Stevenson.)
DEDICATION.
My dear Charles Baxter,
If you ever read this tale, you will likely ask yourself more questions than I should care to answer: as for instance how the Appin murder has come to fall in the year 1751, how the Torran rocks have crept so near to Earraid, or why the printed trial is silent as to all that touches David Balfour. These are nuts beyond my ability to crack. But if you tried me on the point of Alan's guilt or innocence, I think I could defend the reading of the text. To this day you will find the tradition of Appin clear in Alan's favour. If you inquire, you may even hear that the descendants of "the other man" who fired the shot are in the country to this day. But that other man's name, inquire as you please, you shall not hear; for the Highlander values a secret for itself and for the congenial exercise of keeping it. I might go on for long to justify one point and own another indefensible; it is more honest to confess at once how little I am touched by the desire of accuracy. This is no furniture for the scholar's library, but a book for the winter evening school-room when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who ​was a grim old fire-eater in his day, has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman's attention from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century, and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his dreams.
As for you, my dear Charles, I do not even ask you to like the tale. But perhaps when he is older, your son will; he may then be pleased to find his father's name on the fly-leaf; and in the meanwhile it pleases me to set it there, in memory of many days that were happy and some (now perhaps as pleasant to remember) that were sad. If it is strange for me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygone adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same streets—who may to-morrow open the door of the old Speculative, where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved and inglorious Macbean—or may pass the corner of the close where that great society, the L. J. R., held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of Burns and his companions. I think I see you, moving there by plain daylight, beholding with your natural eyes those places that have now become for your companion a part of the scenery of dreams. How, in the intervals of present business, the past must echo in your memory! Let it not echo often without some kind thoughts of your friend.
R. L. S.
Skerryvore,
Bournemouth.
CONTENTS.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Layout 2
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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