Book #199 – Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Sticking around the late 1800s, I’m returning to the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, and I have to say, this was a vastly different tone than Jekyll and Hyde. I have been wanting to read this book for a while, actually, and not just because Treasure Planet was a vastly underappreciated Disney movie. No, it’s been mentioned as well beloved in several other books I’ve read for this list. For example, there’s a dogeared copy that Bod reads in The Graveyard Book after “borrowing” it from a resident ghost. It seems that any more modern story about a young boy growing up, there’s a reference to Treasure Island, so I can only assume all literary boyhoods has a pirate phase.

Treasure Island started as a serialized novel between 1881 and 1882, and was published as a book in 1883 under the pseudonym Captain George North. Whether this was to distinguish the book as different than other writing of Stevenson or for some other reason, I haven’t found. However, the book is sort of the basis for how we now perceive pirates, with peg legs, parrots, and maps with x’s on them. There’s been dozens of adaptations across film, television, theater, and even radio. My favorites are still Treasure Planet and Muppet Treasure Island, but I was a child in the 1990s, so of course they are. Also, no idea if the sea food chain Long John Silver’s ever had to pay royalties for taking its name from one of the main characters.