INTRODUCTION

        Stevenson called Treasure Island his "first book. (press the mouse for more information)" He meant, not the first book that be had published, but the first that had a great success. He has told fully and most interestingly of the beginning and progress of the story. His young stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, was in part responsible for the story, as Stevenson has said in the dedication.

       It is of course the author’s success, but the novel’s conception is interesting. It developed from an imaginary map that Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne had devised on holiday and this goes some way towards explaining the book’s appeal among children. Moreover, the famous antihero Long John Silver was the invention of Stevenson’s friend, William Henley. Nonetheless, the tale is the archetypal nineteenth century ‘ripping yarn’.

            His father, now old and retired from his profession, entered into sympathy with the work like a boy. It was he who made out the contents of Billy Bones's chest, suggested the name Walrus for Flint's ship, and did the handwriting of Bones and Flint on the map. The boy and the old man were an eager audience to each chapter as it was finished.

        Stevenson's interest in places and in maps was always great. In A Little Gossip on Romance he has well expressed his feeling that there is a certain kind of scene appropriate to a certain kind of event; and that many places only await the advent of some genius who will make them famous by fitting to them some appropriate incident. In this case the map, which he called Treasure Island, was the fire of his inspiration and the backbone of his plot. He fell to work upon the story eagerly, writing the first fifteen chapters at the rate of a chapter a day. Then his inspiration gave out. The tale would not go on. In the meantime it had begun to appear as a serial in Young Folks, and Stevenson was in despair. Later he went to Switzerland for the winter, and while here his inspiration came back to him, and he finished the remaining chapters as rapidly and easily as he did the first.

     The first title Stevenson had given it was The Sea Cook. But at the suggestion of his publisher it was changed to "Treasure Island; by Captain George North." Its real value was not recognized at first. But later, Messrs. Cassell, publishers, arranged to bring it out in book form. Its success was now immediate and astonishing. Graham Balfour, his biographer, says:

"Its reception reads like a fairy tale. Statesmen and judges and all sorts of staid and sober men became boys once more, sitting up long after bedtime to read their new book. The story goes that Mr. Gladstone got a glimpse of it at a colleague's house, and spent the next day hunting over London for a second-hand copy. The editor of the Saturday Review, the superior, cynical 'Saturday' of old days, wrote excitedly to say that he thought Treasure Island was the best book that had appeared since Robinson Crusoe; and James Payn, who, if not a great novelist himself, held an undisputed position among novelists and critics, sent a note hardly less enthusiastic. Mr. Andrew Lang spent over it 'several hours of unmingled bliss. This is the kind of stuff a fellow wants. I don't know, except Tom Sawyer and the Odyssey, that I ever liked any romance so well.' "

     Stevenson's own comment upon his success was characteristically modest and whimsical. "This gives one strange thoughts of how very bad the common run of books must be; and generally all the books that the wiseacres think too bad to print are the very ones that bring one praise and pudding.' But this modest comment of the author is indeed far from the truth. Though Treasure Island is neither a great book, nor a storehouse of wisdom, it is one of the very best of its kind. No apologies need ever be made for books which can give so much harmless pleasure to readers of all ages and of such varying tastes.

     The central figure of the story is, of course, the Sea Cook, Captain John Silver. His ability is as extraordinary as his shameless rascality; and he is consistently drawn from start to finish. Many of the other figures are equally well done, though less prominent: as Bill Bones, the blind Pew, Doctor Livesey, the Squire, and Ben Gunn, the maroon. Each has his mark,--his tag, so to speak. One of the best touches of the story is poor Ben Gunn's habit of semi-soliloquy in dialogue and his longing for a bit of "Christian diet," a piece of toasted cheese.

     The author has recorded with characteristic frankness his debt to other writers. He borrowed the parrot, from Robinson Crusoe, the skeleton from Poe, the stockade from Captain Marryat's Masterman Ready, "and Billy Bones, the chest, the company in the parlour, the whole inner spirit and a good deal of the material of the first chapters' from Irving's Tales of a Traveller. "But," he goes on, "I had no guess of it then as I sat writing by the fireside, in what seemed the springtides of a somewhat pedestrian inspiration; nor yet, day by day, after lunch, as I read aloud my morning's work to the family. It seemed to me original as sin; it seemed to belong to me like my right eye." One can not but wish that the masters from whom he borrowed might, like us, have the pleasure of seeing what good use he rnade of the loans!

     Were there time and space in such an edition, an interesting essay might be written upon the history of piracy and its contributions to literature. There is something in the life of this type of plunderer that makes a strong appeal to the unregenerate boy-tastes of us all. But like many types of heroes, such as the red Indian and the quarrelsome knight errant, the pirate's charm depends upon his being contemplated at a proper distance of time and place, and through the proper halo of romantic fiction. Near at hand, and seen truly, he was a base and ugly specimen.

     Piracy is perhaps as old as commerce. The Phœnicians, who not only engaged in trade by sea, but preyed upon the commerce of other maritime peoples, such as the Greeks, are thought to have been the first pirates. Our Norse and Saxon ancestors were famous pirates; they took England and Northern France in that direct and brutal way. Piracy flourished in the middle ages. No general attempt was made to suppress it. There was, indeed, something of the same halo attaching to it as to the equally cruel and savage practice of winning lands by conquest. Society rested somewhat unstably on the simple plan that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can.

            The law of might had not yet come into contempt. So in spite of attempts by various nations to put it down, it existed in Europe until the end of the eighteenth century. Its last representatives were the Moors of the northern coast of Africa. Our school histories tell us that it was finally suppressed here by the United States; English text-books assign the credit to English sailors. Both are entitled to the credit.

            The particular type of piracy, of which that in Treasure Island is one of the flickering remnants, was that against the Spaniards in the Spanish Main, or the Caribbean Sea. The Spaniards had stolen vast treasure from the Indians, and added to it by working the gold and silver mines in Central America; and enterprising adventurers of various nations proceeded to steal from the Spaniards by robbing and sinking their treasure-laden ships. The most adventurous and successful thieves were the English. Under the color of the war between England and Spain, men like Admiral Hawke and Sir Francis Drake became rich and famous heroes. But when war ceased, and piracy became mere theft and murder, the sentiment of nations could no longer condone it; and the Buccaneers, as they were then called, were hunted from the seas.

            In the Encyclopedia Britannica the student will find under "Buccaneers" an interesting account of the rise and fall of this particular branch of piracy. How the pirate had come to be the lowest and most reckless type of criminal, hunted and hiding from the law, a thing of terror to the law-abiding citizen, and living himself in terror of being "hanged and sun-dried at Execution Dock" is clearly shown in Treasure Island. It will easily be remembered, however, that this book is not history, but romance.
 

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