From May to July in 1886, RL Stevenson published a boys’s novel Kidnapped in the magazine Young Folks. Everyone from  Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges, and Hilary Mantel cited it as an influence. It’s a delightful little novel by RL Stevenson. I only know him through Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (A novel I need to review, since it’s an extended allegory of Romans 7; the true and the false self; the ongoing horror of whether the false self will reemerge).

What’s the full title?

It’s a Sufjan Stevens-esque title if ever I saw one:

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.

I mean, be honest: are book publishers even trying anymore?

In any case, Kidnapped struck me first through its linguistic interest. It’s written in both English and Lowland Scots (Broad Scots). Broad Scots? A West Germanic language that evolved from Northumbrian Old English and Early Northern Middle and has, it seems, completely given way either to Gaelic and Modern English. It’s weird to step into a novel written clearly in a modern language you understand as your home tongue, yet written in dialog with a people group whom — at least linguistically — have been all but wiped from the planet. Yet here we sit.

It’s a historical adventure novel (not historical because RL Stevenson is a historical figure, but the events were his history). As such, I feel as if Kidnapped made a better outlander novel than Outlander, to be frank. Especially considering the theme of outlander castaway who slowly becomes a Jacobite sympathizer. The novel features several real historical figures including Alan Breck Stewart and features the Appin Murder:

The Appin Murder (Scottish Gaelic: Murt na h-Apainn^[1]) was the assassination of Colin Roy Campbell, the Clan Campbelltacksman of Glenure, on 14 May 1752 near Appin in the west of Scotland. The murder occurred in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and led to the execution of James Stewart of the Glens, often characterized as a notorious miscarriage of justice.^[2]The murder inspired events in Robert Louis Stevenson‘s 1886 novel Kidnapped. ^[2]

— wiki for Appin Murder

You can find the synopsis elsewhere, but it’s basically about a boy whose parents have died. He gets a Harry Potter-esque letter (actually, perhaps Harry Potter gets a Balfour-esque letter) to deliver to his uncle. The House of Shaws want him to disinherit. His uncle more or less hire pirates to kidnap and kill him.

Shenanigans ensue.

It also may be based on a real courtroom drama:

It has been speculated that the novel was inspired in part by the true story from earlier in the 18th century of James Annesley, heir to five aristocratic titles who was kidnapped at the age of 12 by his uncle Richard and shipped from Dublin to America in 1728.^[11] He managed to escape after 13 years and return to reclaim his birthright from his uncle in one of the longest courtroom dramas of its time.^[12] Kidnapped does not end in the way Annesley’s life story did, as the ship on which the main character was kidnapped never got beyond Scotland, allowing for a rich story of Scotland, highlands and lowlands. Further, a key event in the plot happens when David is present when Colin Roy Campbell falls dead from the unseen murderer’s bullet. 

Annesley biographer Ekirch felt in his response to a remark in the review of his book that “It is inconceivable that Stevenson, a voracious reader of legal history, was unfamiliar with the saga of James Annesley, which by the time of Kidnapped’s publication in 1886 had already influenced four other 19th-century novels, most famously Sir Walter Scott‘s Guy Mannering (1815) and Charles Reade‘s The Wandering Heir (1873).”^[11][12] The Scottish author Andro Linklater, who reviewed the book for The Spectator, disagreed with this contention.^[13] The author, Robert Louis Stevenson, did not mention the earlier historic event in the novel, nor in his correspondence; instead he names The Trial of James Stewart for the murder of Colin Roy Campbell at Apppinas an inspiration, according to his wife.^[13]

— wiki of Kidnapped

For me, other than the incredibly rich language and the consistent salted air of a boy left to his wit and courtesies, the novel’s main virtue comes from simple lessons. You might not consider them otherwise. I found these most evocative in phrases like:

1. When a man goes under the water for the third time, he goes down for good.
2. The prevalence of small beer in the culture — and how that might have helped us through the blue laws better than the blue laws themselves.
3. “He was a mean, stooping, narrow-shouldered, clay-faced creature—” warned me against my own inability to be molded and shaped; warned me that my unyielding nature may well turn me into a golem, long-term.
4. How the haggling of the type of dollar might scam a man. Imagine someone trading in Nambia asks for five dollars… American.

Others follow, but I found much of it instructive for life. Give it a go.