Treasure Island
Young Jim Hawkins finds a pirate's treasure map and sails with Squire Trelawney to find the gold, but half the crew are pirates led by the charming one-legged cook, Long John Silver. By Robert Louis Stevenson (1883). A public-domain classic.
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How it begins Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17—, and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow--a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards: Keep reading →About this story
Young Jim Hawkins lives at his mother’s inn on the English coast when an old sailor arrives, asks for rum, and dies leaving behind a sea chest. Inside is a map. Jim, the local squire and the doctor sail for an island to find the treasure, with a crew that includes a friendly one-legged cook named Long John Silver.
Robert Louis Stevenson began it in 1881 to amuse his stepson, and it was published as a book in 1883. It gave pirate stories many of the things we now take for granted: the treasure map, the black spot, the parrot and the wooden leg. It is a fast adventure, but the most interesting thing in it is Silver, a man whom Jim likes and cannot fully trust.
- Themes
- Adventure, greed, growing up, loyalty and betrayal
- Good for
- A good long adventure, reading aloud to children, anyone who likes pirates
- Worth noticing
- How Jim feels about Silver in the first half of the book, and how that shifts.
Chapters
- 1The Old Sea-dog at the Admiral Benbow10 min · 14 Oct
- 2Black Dog Appears and Disappears10 min · 14 Oct
- 3The Black Spot10 min · 14 Oct
- 4The Sea-chest10 min · 14 Oct
- 5The Last of the Blind Man9 min · 14 Oct
- 6The Captain’s Papers9 min · 14 Oct
- 7I Go to Bristol8 min · 14 Oct
- 8At the Sign of the Spy-glass8 min · 14 Oct
- 9Powder and Arms8 min · 14 Oct
- 10The Voyage9 min · 14 Oct
- 11What I Heard in the Apple-Barrel9 min · 14 Oct
- 12Council of War8 min · 14 Oct
- 13How I Began My Shore Adventure8 min · 14 Oct
- 14The First Blow9 min · 14 Oct
- 15The Man of the Island10 min · 14 Oct
- 16Narrative Continued by the Doctor: How the Ship Was Abandoned8 min · 14 Oct
- 17Narrative Continued by the Doctor: The Jolly-boat’s Last Trip7 min · 14 Oct
- 18Narrative Continued by the Doctor: End of the First Day’s Fighting7 min · 14 Oct
- 19Narrative Resumed by Jim Hawkins: The Garrison in the Stockade9 min · 14 Oct
- 20Silver’s Embassy9 min · 14 Oct
- 21The Attack9 min · 14 Oct
- 22How I Began My Sea Adventure10 min · 14 Oct
- 23The Ebb-tide Runs7 min · 14 Oct
- 24The Cruise of the Coracle9 min · 14 Oct
- 25I Strike the Jolly Roger8 min · 14 Oct
- 26Israel Hands13 min · 14 Oct
- 27“Pieces of Eight”10 min · 14 Oct
- 28In the Enemy’s Camp12 min · 14 Oct
- 29The Black Spot Again10 min · 14 Oct
- 30On Parole11 min · 14 Oct
- 31The Treasure-hunt--Flint’s Pointer10 min · 14 Oct
- 32The Treasure-hunt--The Voice Among the Trees9 min · 14 Oct
- 33The Fall of a Chieftain9 min · 14 Oct
- 34And Last9 min · 14 Oct