Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson is an adventure novel set in Scotland, United Kingdom in 1751. The plot of the novel revolves around the protagonist, a seventeen year old orphaned boy named David Balfour who seeks his inheritance from his villainous uncle Ebenezer Balfour, who tries to cheat him of his inheritance by killing him, and when his plot fails has David kidnapped with the intention of selling him into slavery. The novel is told by David in the form of a first person narrative. David realizes his uncle’s treachery early in the novel and tells the reader, “There was now no doubt about my uncle's enmity; there was no doubt I carried my life in my hand, and he would leave no stone unturned that he might compass my destruction…”
The novel deals with the issues of friendship, loyalty and honour, and explores David’s transition from boyhood to manhood. The author presents an unlikely friendship between David, a Protestant Whig and Alan Breck Stewart, a Catholic Jacobite. The novel also explores the history of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants during the aftermath of the Revolution in England and Scotland in the mid eighteenth century.