Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

 

Of all the British writers of the XIX century, Robert Louis Stevenson is probably the one with the most interesting biography.

He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1850, as a child, he was very sickly. He had a chronic bronchial disease  and spent much of his life looking for a suitable climate to live in. In 1876 he went to France where he met an American married woman and after  she got a divorce, they moved to California.

In 1888 he took his wife, mother and stepson  to the South Seas and they settled in Apia, Samoa.  He died in there in 1894.

Stevenson loved the sea,  the Bohemian life, adventure and romance and also reading about Scottish history,  among his novels one should mention “Treasure Island” (1883), “The Strange Case of Dr Jekill and Mr Hyde” (1886) and “Kidnapped” (1886).

Kidnapped is about a boy named David Balfour, whose parents died when he was a child and was adopted by some friends. Afterwards, he  discovers that he has an uncle but his uncle is very bad and tries to kill him because he is afraid that David will want his father’s inheritance. After failing to kill David, He abandons him in a ship with a captain who has orders of taking David to America and selling him as a slave...

The story is full of adventure, mixed with Scottish XVIII century history. It is good but perhaps not the best work by Stevenson.

 

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