The entire plot of Stevenson's historical romance hinges on a map:

"And here I must explain; and the reader would do well to look at a map. On the day when the fog fell and we ran down Alan's boat, we had been running through the Little Minch. At dawn after the battle, we lay becalmed to the east of the Isle of Canna or between that and Isle Eriska in the chain of the Long Island. Now to get from there to the Linnhe Loch, the straight course was through the narrows of the Sound of Mull. But the captain had no chart; he was afraid to trust his brig so deep among the islands; and the wind serving well, he preferred to go by west of Tiree and come up under the southern coast of the great Isle of Mull" (chapter 12, paragraph 2).

An so the novel's heroes, David Balfour and Alan Breck, are thrown together by a shipwreck brought about for the want of a map. The narrator's advice to the reader that they "would do well to look at a map" is an instruction for us to explore the Isle of Mull along with the protagonist - to follow the story as both text and geography.

Set in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, Stevenson's novel is one of geographical and moral navigation, and Cassell's frontispiece map makes plain the Scottish Highlands' place as a character in the story.

"Making skilful use of Scots it brilliantly evokes the atmosphere of Scotland in the period following the 1745 Jacobite rising and explores the differences between lowland and highland mentality in the contrasting characters of David Balfour and Alan Breck" (ODNB).

Henry James described Breck as "the most perfect character in English literature" (quoted in Haycraft, p592).

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) began work on 'Kidnapped' in 1880, and it was serialized in Young Folks magazine from May to July 1886, appearing in book form, as here, later that same year.