The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Kidnapped

KIDNAPPED, by Robert Louis Stevenson,purports to be, as the subtitle sets forth, the“Memoirs of the adventures of David Balfourin the year 1751; how he was kidnapped andcast away; his sufferings in a desert isle; hisjourney in the wild Highlands; his acquaintancewith Alan Breck Stewart and othernotorious Highland Jacobites; with all that hesuffered at the hands of his uncle, EbenezerBalfour of Shaws, falsely so called.” Thisromance, with a hero bearing a name taken fromhis own family tree, Stevenson declares tobe the only one of his books in which “thecharacters took the bit in their teeth” andspoke and acted out the story for themselves.“I began it,” he confesses, “partly as a lark,partly as a pot-boiler, and suddenly it moved,David and Alan stepped out from the canvas,and I found I was in another world.” Becauseof the author's illness, the story, published in1886, was broken off short with the return ofthe hero and the discomfiture of the wickeduncle. It was concluded in a sequel publishedin 1893 under the name of ‘David Balfour’ inthe United States, and ‘Catriona’ in GreatBritain. ‘Kidnapped’ owed its success largelyto the admirable portrayal of the Highlander,Alan Breck. Matthew Arnold was delightedwith it, and Andrew Lang pronounced it “avolume containing more of the spirit of Scottthan any other in English fiction.”