About Treasure Island

By Robert Louis Stevenson · first published in 1883 · Children's

Treasure Island began with a map. In the wet summer of 1881 Robert Louis Stevenson was on holiday in Scotland with his young stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, and to pass the time the two of them painted a map of an imaginary island. Stevenson added names such as Spyglass Hill and Skeleton Island, marked three red crosses, and started writing a chapter a day to go with it.

Nearly everything people picture when they think of pirates comes from this book: the treasure map with an X, the black spot, the parrot on the shoulder, the one-legged sea cook and the song about fifteen men on a dead man’s chest. The story is told by Jim Hawkins, an innkeeper’s son who finds a map in a dead sailor’s sea chest and sails for the Caribbean as cabin boy, only to learn that half the crew are pirates.

The book’s great creation is Long John Silver. He is a murderer and a liar, and he is also brave, funny and kind to Jim, and Stevenson never lets the reader settle on what to think of him. Written for boys, the novel has been read by adults ever since for its speed and its plain, exact prose. This preview covers the arrival of the old captain at the Admiral Benbow inn.