Kidnapped (RP Classics)
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Product Description
Review
These inaugurate a new series of uniform classics, simplified so that little more than their bare essentials remain. Where there may be an excuse for a revision for young moderns of, say, the stilted quality of Defoe's Crusoe or a shortening of Kidnapped's lengthy descriptions - these are matters of individual taste. But it does seem that readers should be willing to take what the authors wrote originally. That case is strengthened by the bone-dryness of these revisions, all of which have been cut so extensively that little atmosphere remains, and the purpose-to introduce young readers to the classics-defeats itself. Attractive size and format and plentiful supplies of colored pictures make up for textual imperfections. Plastic covers. (Kirkus Reviews)
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
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Product Description
Robert Louis Stevenson always considered "Kidnapped", the tale of 17-year-old David Balfour's adventures in the remote islands and highlands of Scotland with renegade soldier Alan Breck Stewart, to be his greatest novel, but when the classic adventure tale was published in 1886, it was without much of what its author held dear. His English publisher had excised many of the Scottish words and phrases he had used to evoke the suspense of the novel. From simple misreadings to deliberate revisions, subsequent printed editions represented major departures from Stevenson's handwritten text. Drawing on the unique autograph manuscript in the Huntington Library, Professor Barry Menikoff has faithfully reproduced the text as Stevenson originally wrote it, restoring the author's language and punctuation, as well as the authentic Scots quality of his diction. This handsome new edition of a novel, whose avowed purpose was the recovery of an important part of Scots history, reproduces for the first time the original drawings that accompanied the text during its serialization in Young Folks. Menikoff's substantial introduction situates the book in its cultural context and enables us to see why Stevenson's contemporaries were both entranced and awed by his achievement. In his extensive notes to the novel, he reveals Stevenson's enormous prestige as an authority on language, both English and Scots, for Kidnapped was widely drawn upon as a reference by lexicographers for the Oxford English Dictionary and the Scottish National Dictionary. Finally, for a tale that charts the 'wanderings' of David Balfour over the land and seas of Scotland, this edition is the first to provide a gazetteer of place-names encountered during the course of those travels.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scottish Treasure,
By
This review is from: Kidnapped (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
I'm as great a fan of the present item, Stevenson's *Kidnapped*, as of his better known *Treasure Island*. Yet if really forced to recommend one over the other, I might choose *Kidnapped*.
At first sight, the two works are disquietingly similar: around the middle of the 18th Century (not Stevenson's own 19th Century), an impoverished, inexperienced, but self-respecting teenage hero is set to sea by circumstance. Here he faces a crew of thugs whom, supported by strong role-models, he valiantly defeats. Then follows a long voyage of wandering & discovery until at last he comes to spiritual & material independence under the wise & watchful eye of his mentors, portrayed as very pillars of a romanticized British Empire. But there the similarity does stop. *Kidnapped* is exclusively about Scotland & its entirely unforgettable inhabitants. Its sea voyage is a circumnavigation of Scotland, no more, no less. The perilous return to the home town takes place across hills & heather. Finally & most important, every character in the novel is as Scottish as its teenage hero - or as RL Stevenson was himself. You might say that *Kidnapped* offers all the assets of *Treasure Island*, plus one: the tense but warm atmosphere of an independence-loving nation during the waning years of its armed rebellion against the English. Stevenson, in loving mastery of his subject yet never as uncritical as he seems, ignores neither politics, intrigues, & clan quarrels, nor the (predictable) homage to bagpipe & tartans. The book is therefore flavoursome in a manner that even *Treasure Island*, for all its power, never attains. The historical & cultural depth in *Kidnapped* is simply greater - & the book just as entertaining. I believe this now classic work will go as well with teens as it did 100 years ago. But it certainly is a book for adults too.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fine historical fiction,
By
This review is from: Kidnapped (Penguin Popular Classics) (Paperback)
The troubled Stevenson, creator of Jekyll and Hyde and 'Treasure Island', turned to his love of Scottish history for 'Kidnapped', the tale of Davie Balfour, a lowland Whig sold into slavery by a miscreant uncle and then, after a shipwreck, a companion of Jacobite highlander Alen Breck in a desperate escape through the mountains of Scotland with English troops in pursuit. An essentially simple tale told with wit and style, and a highly accessible classic.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The archetypical adventure story,
By
This review is from: Kidnapped (Penguin Popular Classics) (Paperback)
It's been years since I first read this book (in Dutch at the time, I guess I must have been 13 or 14) but I still held fond memories about David Balfour's adventures in the Scottish highlands, so when I saw it published as one of Penguin's Popular Classics I bought it immediately, anxious to find out if it would prove as captivating after all these years and in English. I needn't have worried! From the very first sentence I was once again drawn into the story of David Balfour, his miserly uncle Ebenezer, and the highland 'gentleman' Alan Breck. Reading this late into the night, I felt 13 again, and as ready as then to sympathize with 'Davie' and always eager to find out what happened next (and having finished it plunged straight into 'Treasure Island' for good measure). It proved - as well it might - even better in English with the delightful Scottish words and phrases Stevenson uses in the dialogues.
One of the first but surely still one of the very best adventures stories, splendid entertainment whatever your age. I'll say nae maer!
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