Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. Complete New Edition. With A Preface by Mrs. Stevenson. Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure vel by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. Written as a boys' vel and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886, the vel has attracted the praise and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges, and Seamus Heaney. A sequel, Catriona, was published in 1893. As historical fiction, it is set around 18th-century Scottish events, tably the Appin Murder, which occurred near Ballachulish in 1752 in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rising. Many of the characters, and one of the principals, Alan Breck Stewart, were real people. The political situation of the time is portrayed from different viewpoints, and the Scottish Highlanders are treated sympathetically. The full title of the book gives away major parts of the plot and creates the false impression that the vel is autobiographical. It is 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 torious Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called: Written by Himself and w set forth by Robert Louis Stevenson.