Treasure Island

‘Who can think of a pirate without conjuring up the image of Long John Silver?’ Daily Mail

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAKE ARNOTT When young Jim Hawkins discovers a treasure map in a pirate’s chest in his parents’ inn, he is drawn into a world of danger and adventure. He joins the crew setting sail to the Caribbean to seek out the booty and over the course of the voyage confronts mutiny, murder and the charismatic and devious Long John Silver.

Author Profile

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh on the 13 November 1850. He studied at Edinburgh University and also qualified as a lawyer. He travelled extensively in Europe and began his writing career during these years. He also met his future wife, Fanny, in France in 1876.They were married in 1880. In 1883 he published Treasure Island to great acclaim. Kidnapped and ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ were both published in 1886. Problems with his health meant that Stevenson frequently travelled in the warmer climates of the South Seas. He died in Samoa on 3 December 1894.

Reviews

An undisputed masterpiece,A poet, a rebel, a philosopher, a genius far ahead of his time, [Stevenson] has given us some of the most powerful characters of English literature,What I didn't anticipate was the power of Stevenson’s prose. His ability to bring everything vividly to life is still astonishing. It was probably the first time for me that reading became as exciting as messing about. The pirate has a dangerous glamour to him, a degenerate dandyism, something, once I was in my teens, that I would admire in people like David Bowie and Sid Vicious’,Reading Treasure Island at the age of seven or eight was my real awakening as a reader… it is all as frightening and exciting when read for the umpteenth time in middle age as when first discovered in childhood,I believe Treasure Island to be Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece. The very opening – the murder-bent Blind Pew, tapping his way towards the isolated inn – is designed to make our flesh creep. Long John Silver is a great literary creation. Re-reading the book, it gripped me as firmly now as it did under the torch-lit blankets 60 years ago,How perfectly structured and paced it is, every episode carefully weighted, every chapter end a cliffhanger, scarcely a word wasted