David Balfour cover

David Balfour

Rating 4.0
Word count
528K words
Chapters
53

Tags

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971, and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. David Balfour by Robert Louis Stevenson. Author: Stevenson, Robert Louis, 1850-1894. Language: English. Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature. Release Date: Nov 23, 2004.

Editor's review

David Balfour is the sequel to Stevenson's Kidnapped, continuing the adventures and growth of David Balfour. Compared with its predecessor, the novel focuses less on pure adventure and more on the tensions of personal relationships, legal and family entanglements, and the protagonist's psychological passage from boyhood to maturity. Stevenson's narrative pace is brisk and his dialogue vivid; the Scottish setting and travel experiences are interwoven throughout, giving the book both the readability of popular adventure and the author's enduring attention to moral dilemmas and questions of identity. As a public-domain electronic text, it works well as supplementary reading for Stevenson in English literature courses, and for readers of classic adventure fiction who want to complete the story. Note that it is generally regarded as a sequel; reading Kidnapped first makes it easier to follow the characters and plot.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers who enjoy Stevenson and Scottish-set adventure novels
  • Readers who have read Kidnapped and want to complete David Balfour's story
  • English literature students or learners taking courses on classic fiction
  • Readers who prefer nineteenth-century English classics and are comfortable with older narrative styles

Not a good fit for

  • Readers with no exposure to Kidnapped who hope to follow the full story on its own
  • Readers who prefer fast-paced modern suspense or strong plot twists
  • Beginners with little patience for nineteenth-century English syntax and Scots dialect

Reading tips

  1. Read Kidnapped first if possible; the character relationships and backstory will be much clearer.
  2. Pay attention to the dialogue between David and key supporting characters; personality emerges most in these exchanges.
  3. Don't struggle word by word with Scots dialect or historical place names; follow the plot first.
  4. After finishing, revisit the protagonist's key choices to trace his growth and deepen your understanding.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53

FAQ

Can I read this without having read Kidnapped?
You can, but you'll lose a good deal of context. This is the sequel to Kidnapped, and David Balfour's situation, some relationships, and earlier experiences build on the previous book. If time allows, read Kidnapped first for a fuller understanding.
How is this book related to Kidnapped?
David Balfour is the sequel to Kidnapped, continuing the protagonist's experiences and advancing his adventures and growth. The two are often called the David Balfour series, and reading the earlier book first is preferable.
What if the old-fashioned English is hard to read?
Read quickly for plot first, skipping over dialect or unfamiliar expressions, and return to difficult passages after finishing the chapter. For coursework, use a reliable annotated edition or study guide to help with historical background and language conventions.

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About the author

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was a nineteenth-century British writer known for adventure fiction and poetry. His representative work Treasure Island established a classic model for treasure-hunt adventure stories and has circulated widely in many translations; the library also holds the Spanish version La isla del tesoro and the German version Die Schatzinsel: Roman. Another representative work, A Child's Garden of Verses, writes from a child's perspective about play, imagination, and everyday feelings, with fresh language and natural rhythm, and is a common reader in English children's poetry. The library holds as many as 101 of his works, showing the variety of his subjects and forms. Public information is limited, so details of his life and education are not elaborated here; overall, his writing combines thrilling narrative with a lyrical tone, being strongly story-driven yet readable aloud, and has had a lasting influence on later adventure literature and children's literature.

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