Kidnapped is less widely read than Stevenson’s other children’s classic Treasure Island but is just as thrilling and exciting a story. Indeed, the action doesn’t let up from the young hero David Balfour’s first meeting with his villainous Uncle Ebeneezer to his final triumphant return at the end of the book, after he’s endured kidnap and shipwreck amongst other adventures. This new edition is very handsome indeed, featuring full colour illustrations that are both accurate in their depiction of the landscape, characters and action (the story is set in Scotland 1751) and full of atmosphere. A fine addition to a child’s bookshelf, and a great summer read too. ~ Andrea Reece
A beautiful gift edition of this timeless classic by Robert Louis Stevenson, enchantingly illustrated and told in its complete and unabridged form. Perfect for reading aloud to younger children too.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born to Thomas and Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850. From the beginning he was sickly. Through much of his childhood he was attended by his faithful nurse, Alison Cunningham, known as Cummy in the family circle. She told him morbid stories about the Covenanters (the Scots Presbyterian martyrs), read aloud to him Victorian penny-serial novels, Bible stories, and the Psalms, and drilled the catechism into him, all with his parents' approval. Thomas Stevenson was quite a storyteller himself, and his wife doted on their only child, sitting in admiration while her precocious son expounded on religious dogma. Stevenson inevitably reacted to the morbidity of his religious education and to the stiffness of his family's middle-class values, but that rebellion would come only after he entered Edinburgh University.
The juvenilia that survives from his childhood shows an observer who was already sensitive to religious issues and Scottish history. Not surprisingly, the boy who listened to Cummy's religious tales first tried his hand at retelling Bible stories: "A History of Moses" was followed by "The Book of Joseph." When Stevenson was sixteen his family published a pamphlet he had written entitled The Pentland Rising, a recounting of the murder of Nonconformist Scots Presbyterians who rebelled against their royalist persecutors.
