Kidnapped

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, November 13, 1850, and died December 4, 1894, in Samoa. In the relatively brief span of forty-four years, dogged by critically poor health, he made an enormous contribution to English literature with his novels, poetry, and essays. The son of comfortably fixed, upper-middle-class Scottish parents, he was the victim of lung trouble from birth and spent a sheltered childhood surrounded by devoted care. Although his schooling was irregular, he was widely read, and he began to write for English magazines in his twenties. In 1880, he married Mrs. Fanny Osbourne, a woman ten years his senior, and the balance of his life was devoted to unremitting work and a search for health that took him to many corners of the world. He was a slender, handsome man of great charm, who loved children and was known as a brilliant conversationalist. He lived a short but immensely productive life, literally in the shadow of death, and his books are characterized by a conscious striving after style, vivid imagination, memorable action, and a mastery of suspense. John Seelye is a leading American Studies scholar and professor of English at the University of Florida at Gainesville. He is the author of The True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Prophetic Waters: The River in Early American Life.Stevenson, Robert Louis is the author of 'Kidnapped' with ISBN 9780451527684 and ISBN 0451527682.