Before You Begin

Before you begin.

In 1751, sixteen-year-old David Balfour leaves Essendean to visit his uncle at the House of Shaws. The promised welcome gives way to danger, and David is carried from the familiar roads of the Lowlands into a story of shipboard peril, Highland flight, and an inheritance he must fight to claim.

Robert Louis Stevenson published Kidnapped in 1886. He builds the adventure through David’s quick observations and changing fortunes, while the Scottish landscape and the country’s unsettled political past shape every turn of the journey. David’s meeting with Alan Breck Stewart brings two very different companions together, bound by necessity as they make their way across the Highlands.

This illustrated edition gathers the people, places, and defining scenes of the novel, with a recap after each chapter. The gallery and recaps accompany the story; David’s account remains at its centre.

Turn the page to meet the cast and trace David’s route, then begin his memoir of the adventure.