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Treasure Island (originally titled The Sea Cook: A Story for Boys) is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, telling a story of "buccaneers and buried gold". It is considered a coming-of-age story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action. The novel was originally serialised from 1881 to 1882 in the children's magazine Young Folks, 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. It has since become one of the most often dramatized and adapted novels. Since its publication, Treasure Island has had significant influence on depictions of pirates in popular culture, including elements such as deserted tropical islands, treasure maps marked with an "X", and one-legged seamen with parrots perched on their shoulders. Summary In the mid-18th century, an old sailor who identifies himself as "The Captain" starts to lodge at 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". Black Dog, a sailor, recognizes the captain as his former shipmate Billy Bones, and confronts him. They get into a sword fight; Black Dog flees, and Bones suffers a stroke. That night, Jim's father dies. Days later, Pew, a blind beggar, visits the inn, delivering a summons to Bones called "the black spot". Shortly thereafter, Bones suffers another stroke and dies. Pew and his accomplices attack the inn but are attacked and routed by mounted excise officers, and Pew is trampled to death by one of their horses. Jim and his mother escape with a packet from The Captain's sea chest, which is found to contain a map of the 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 set sail from Bristol on a schooner chartered by Trelawney, the Hispaniola, under Captain Smollett. Jim forms a strong bond with the ship's one-legged cook, Long John Silver. The crew suffers a tragedy when first mate Mr. Arrow, a drunkard, is washed overboard during a storm. While hidden in an apple barrel, Jim overhears a conversation among the Hispaniola's crew which reveals that many of them are pirates who had served on Captain Flint's ship, the Walrus, with Silver leading them. They plan to mutiny after the salvage of the treasure, and to murder the captain and the few remaining loyal crew. Jim secretly informs Captain Smollet, Trelawney, and Livesey. Arriving at the island and going ashore, Jim flees into the woods after witnessing Silver murder a sailor. He meets a marooned pirate named Ben Gunn, who is also a former member of Flint's crew. The mutineers arm themselves and take the ship, while Jim and Smollett's loyal band take refuge in an abandoned stockade on the island. After a brief truce, the mutineers attack the stockade, with casualties on both sides of the battle. Jim makes his way to the Hispaniola and cuts the ship from its anchor, drifting it along the ebb tide. He boards the ship and encounters the pirate Israel Hands, who had been injured in a drunken dispute with one of his companions. Hands helps Jim beach the schooner in the northern bay, then attempts to kill Jim with a knife, but Jim shoots him dead with two pistols. Jim goes ashore and returns to the stockade, where he is horrified to find only Silver and the pirates. Silver tells Jim that when everyone found the ship was gone, Captain Smollett's party had agreed to a truce whereby the pirates take the map and allow the besieged party to leave. In the morning, Livesey arrives to treat the wounded and sick pirates, and tells Silver to look out for trouble once he's found the site of the treasure. After a dispute over leadership, Silver and the others set out with the map, taking Jim along as a hostage. They find a skeleton with its arms oriented toward the treasure, unnerving the party. Ben Gunn shouts Captain Flint's last words from the forest, making the superstitious pirates believe that Flint's ghost is haunting the island. They eventually find a treasure cache, but it is empty. The pirates prepare to kill Silver and Jim, but they are driven off by the doctor's party, including Gunn. Livesey explains that Gunn had already found the bulk of the treasure and taken it to his cave, long ago. The expedition members load this portion of the treasure onto the Hispaniola and depart the island, with Silver as their only prisoner. At their first port, in Spanish America, Silver steals a bag of money and escapes. The remaining crew sail back to Bristol and divide up the treasure. Some treasure was never found, but Jim refuses to return to the "accursed" island to look for it. Inspiration Treasure Island was written by Stevenson after returning from his first trip to America where he was married. Still a relatively unknown author, inspiration came in summer of 1881 in Braemar, Scotland when bad weather kept the family inside. To amuse his 12-year old stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, he used the idea of a secret map as the basis of a story about hidden treasure. He had clearly started work by 25 August, writing to a friend, "If this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day. Will you be surprised to learn that it is about Buccaneers, that it begins in the Admiral Benbow public house on the Devon coast, that it's all about a map and a treasure and a mutiny and a derelict ship... It's quite silly and horrid fun – and what I want is the best book about Buccaneers that can be had." Stevenson originally gave the book the title The Sea Cook. One month after conceiving of the book, chapters began to appear in the pages of the Young Folks magazine. After completing several chapters rapidly, Stevenson was interrupted by illness. He left Scotland and continued working on the first draft near London, where he and his father discussed points of the tale, and his father suggested elements that he included. The novel eventually ran in seventeen weekly installments from October 1, 1881, to January 28, 1882. The book was later republished as the novel Treasure Island and proved to be Stevenson's first financial and critical success. The Liberal politician William Ewart Gladstone, who served four terms as British Prime Minister between 1868 and 1894, was one of the book's biggest fans; it was said that he stayed up all night to read it. The growth of the desert island genre can be traced back to 1719 when Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was published. A century later, novels such as S. H. Burney's The Shipwreck (1816), and Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate (1822) continued to expand upon Defoe's classic. Other authors in the mid-19th century continued this trend, with works including James Fenimore Cooper's The P.... Discover the Robert Louis Stevenson Peter Hunt popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Robert Louis Stevenson Peter Hunt books.