About the Book
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (13 November 1850 - 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, musician and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and A Child's Garden of Verses. Stevenson was a literary celebrity during his lifetime, and now ranks as the 26th most translated author in the world. His works have been admired by many other writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Bertolt Brecht, Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, Cesare Pavese, Emilio Salgari, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, Vladimir Nabokov, J. M. Barrie, and G. K. Chesterton, who said that Stevenson "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins".................Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold". Its influence is enormous on popular 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.PART I-"THE OLD BUCCANEER"An old sailor, calling himself "the captain"-real name Billy Bones-comes to lodge at the Admiral Benbow Inn on the west English coast during the mid-18th-century, paying the innkeeper's son, Jim Hawkins, a few pennies to keep a lookout for "a one-legged seafaring man". A seaman with intact legs, but lacking two fingers, shows up to confront Billy about sharing his treasure map. After running the stranger off in a violent fight, Billy, who drinks far too much rum, has a stroke and tells Jim that his former shipmates covet the contents of his sea chest. After a visit from an evil blind man named Pew who gives him "the black spot" as a summons to share the treasure, Billy has another stroke and dies; Jim and his mother (his father has also died just a few days before) unlock the sea chest, finding some money, a journal, and a map. The local physician, Dr. Livesey and the district squire, Trelawney, deduce that the map is of the island where a deceased pirate, Captain Flint buried his treasure. Squire Trelawney proposes buying a ship and going after the treasure, taking Livesey as ship's doctor and Jim as cabin boy.PART II-"THE SEA COOK"Several weeks later, the Squire introduces Jim and Dr. Livesy to "Long John" Silver, a one-legged Bristol tavern-keeper whom he has hired as ship's cook. (Silver enhances his outre attributes-crutch, pirate argot, etc.-with a talking parrot.) They also meet Captain Smollett, who tells them that he dislikes most of the crew on the voyage, which it seems everyone in Bristol knows is a search for treasure. After taking a few precautions, however, they set sail on Trelawney's schooner, the Hispaniola, for the distant island. During the voyage, the first mate, a drunkard, disappears overboard. And just before the island is sighted, Jim-concealed in an apple barrel-overhears Silver talking with two other crewmen. Most of them are former "gentlemen o'fortune" (as Long John Silver refers to pirates) from Flint's crew and have planned a mutiny. Jim alerts the captain, doctor, and squire, and they calculate that they will be seven to 19 against the mutineers and must pretend not to suspect anything until the treasure is found when they can surprise their adversaries.PART III-"MY SHORE ADVENTURE"But after the ship is anchored, Silver and some of the others go ashore, and two men who refuse to join the mutiny are killed-one with so loud a scream that everyone realizes that there can be no more pretence. Jim has impulsively joined the shore party and covertly witnessed Silver committing one of the murders; now, in fleeing, he encounters a half-crazed Englishman, Ben Gunn, who tells him he was marooned there and that he can help against the mutineers in return for passage home and part of the treasure. ...........................
