Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It was written as a boys' novel and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886. It is a coming-of-age tale of a teenager named David Balfour from the Scottish Lowlands. When David, after the death of his parents, decides to leave his home to find his way to the world, he is given a letter by the minister of Essendean, Mr. Campbell, to be delivered to the House of Shaws in Cramond, where David's uncle, Ebenezer Balfour, lives. On arriving at the House of Shaws, David soon discovers that he is the actual heir to the estate and is confronted with the evil side of his uncle. Since then, his life experiences a heavy turmoil, and eventually, after being kidnapped, shipwrecked, haunted as an outlaw, and sick almost to death, David finds his way home to his rightful inheritance. Kidnapped is set around real 18th-century Scottish events, notably the "Appin Murder", which occurred in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745. The narrative is written in English with some dialogue in Lowland Scots, a Germanic language that evolved from an earlier incarnation of English.