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England during the Wars of the Roses, in the fifteenth century. Young Dick Shelton is the ward of the unscrupulous Sir Daniel Brackley, a knight who changes…
England during the Wars of the Roses, in the fifteenth century. Young Dick Shelton is the ward of the unscrupulous Sir Daniel Brackley, a knight who changes sides whenever it suits him. When a band of outlaws in the forest begins killing Sir Daniel's men with black arrows and pins up a rhyme accusing him of murder, Dick begins to suspect that his guardian killed his own father. Meanwhile he befriends a boy called John Matcham, who is not what he seems, and meets the young Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III.
Context and significance
Robert Louis Stevenson first published the story as a serial for boys in 1883, the year Treasure Island appeared as a book, and he pretended to think little of it, but it remains a fast, atmospheric adventure. Its outlaws, the Fellowship of the Black Arrow, echo the legends of Robin Hood. See his life.
About the author
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) came from a family of Edinburgh lighthouse engineers and was expected to follow them, but chose writing, despite lungs so weak he was often bedridden. He travelled constantly in search of health, married the American Fanny Osbourne and wrote Treasure Island for her son.
Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and A Child's Garden of Verses followed, and in 1890 he settled in Samoa, where the islanders called him Tusitala, the teller of tales. He died there at forty-four and is buried on a hilltop above his home.