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Young Jim Hawkins helps his mother run the Admiral Benbow inn on the English coast, until an old sea captain lodging there is visited by a blind beggar and…
Young Jim Hawkins helps his mother run the Admiral Benbow inn on the English coast, until an old sea captain lodging there is visited by a blind beggar and handed the dreaded 'black spot', and dies, leaving a sea chest that holds the map of Captain Flint's buried treasure. Squire Trelawney and Dr Livesey fit out the schooner Hispaniola to find it, with Jim as cabin boy and a cheerful one-legged cook, Long John Silver, with a parrot on his shoulder. Hidden in an apple barrel, Jim overhears that Silver and half the crew are pirates planning mutiny.
Context and significance
Robert Louis Stevenson began the story in 1881 from a map he drew for his young stepson, and it fixed the image of pirates for ever: treasure maps, the Jolly Roger, 'pieces of eight' and the song of 'fifteen men on the dead man's chest'. This edition is illustrated by Louis Rhead. Stevenson's next adventure for young readers was Kidnapped.
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.