part of a set. Navy blue calf leatherette binding with gold lettering.

Treasure Island (originally titled The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys) is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of “buccaneers and buried gold”.

Its influence has been popular on its perceptions of pirates, including such elements as treasure maps marked with an “X”, schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen bearing parrots on their shoulders.

As one of the most frequently-dramatised of all novel creations, Treasure Island was originally considered a coming-of-age story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action. It was originally serialised in the children’s magazine Young Folks from 1881 through 1882 under the title Treasure Island or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola, credited to the pseudonym “Captain George North”. It was first published as a book on 14 November 1883, by Cassell & Co..

The plot starts with a sailboat that has an old sailor named Billy Bones in it. He lodges in the rural Admiral Benbow Inn on England’s Bristol Channel. He tells the innkeeper’s son, Jim Hawkins, to keep a lookout for “a one-legged seafaring man”. A former shipmate named Black Dog confronts Bones and engages with him. Afterwards, it makes themselves get into a violent fight, later making the confrontation end, causing Black Dog to be run off after this. After Black Dog is run off, a blind beggar named Pew visits to give Bones “the black spot” as summoning of sharing a map that leads them to buried treasure. Shortly thereafter, Bones suffers a stroke and dies. Pew and his accomplices attack the inn, but Jim and his mother save themselves while taking some money and an unusually mysterious packet from Bones’ sea chest. Pew is then trampled to death by excise officers. Inside the packet, Jim and his mother find a map of an island on which the infamous pirate Captain Flint hid his treasure. Jim shows the map to the local physician Dr. Livesey and the squire John Trelawney, and they decide to make an expedition to the island, with Jim serving as a cabin boy. They then set sail on Trelawney’s schooner, the Hispaniola, under Captain Smollett. Jim hides in an apple-barrel thereafter. It is later revealed that much of the crew are pirates who had served under Captain Flint’s ship, the Walrus, with the most notable being the ship’s one-legged cook Long John Silver. Jim, hiding in the apple-barrel, overhears their plan to mutiny after the salvage of the treasure and to assassinate the captain and loyal men.

When arriving off of the coast of the island, Jim joins the shore party and begins to explore the island. He meets a marooned pirate named Ben Gunn, who was also a former member of Flint’s crew. The situation comes to a head after the mutineers arm themselves, and Smollett’s men take refuge in an abandoned stockade. During an attack on the stockade, Jim finds his way there and re-joins the crew. Jim manages to make his way to the Hispaniola and cuts the ship’s anchorage, allowing the ship to drift along the ebb tide. Jim boards the Hispaniola, and encounters Israel Hands, who had severely been injured in a dispute with one of his companions. Hands helps Jim beach the schooner in the northern bay, but then attempts to kill Jim with a knife. Jim escapes, climbs into the shrouds of the ship, and shoots his pursuer and does a lot more. This makes him escape later.

Jim escapes from the ship and needs help after this, so he gets back later on. Jim goes back ashore and returns to the stockade, where he is horrified to only find Silver and the pirates. He prevents Jim’s immediate death and tells Jim that when everyone found the ship was gone, Captain Flint’s party agreed to a treaty whereby they gave up the stockade and map, after his death. In the morning, the doctor arrives to treat the wounded and sick pirates and tells Silver to look out for trouble when they find the site of the treasure. After leaving, Silver and the others set out with the map, taking Jim along as a hostage. They encounter a skeleton, and its arms oriented toward their treasure, unnerving the party. At this time, Ben Gunn scares the crew by shouting Captain Flint’s last words from the forest, making the pirates believe that Flint’s ghost is haunting the island instead of him. They eventually find the treasure cache empty. The pirates nearly charge at Silver and Jim, but shots are fired by the ship’s command along with Gunn, from ambush. Livesey explains that Gunn had already found the treasure and taken it to his cave. The expedition members load much of the treasure onto the ship and sail away. At their first port in Spanish America, where they will sign on more crew, Silver steals a bag of money and escapes. The rest sail back to Bristol and divide up the brilliant treasure. Jim says there is more left on the island, but he for one will not undertake another voyage, so he should recover it all.

Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped and A Child’s Garden of Verses.

Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. In 1890, he settled in Samoa where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned away from romance and adventure toward a darker realism. He died in his island home in 1894.

A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson’s critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, though today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018 he was ranked, just behind Charles Dickens, as the 26th-most-translated author in the world