The Master of Ballantrae was written by Robert Louis Stevenson and first published in 1899. Stevenson’s brooding historical romance demonstrates his most abiding theme, the elemental struggle between good and evil as it unfolds against a hauntingly beautiful Scottish landscape, amid the fierce loyalties and violent enmities that characterized Scottish history. When two brothers attempt to split their loyalties between the warring factions of the 1745 Jacobite rising, one family finds itself tragically divided. Stevenson’s remarkably vivid characterizations create an acutely moving, psychologically complex work; as Andrea Barrett points out in her Introduction, "The brothers’ characters, not the historical facts, shape the drama."
