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Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold". First published as a book on 23 May 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881 and 1882 under the title Treasure Island or, the mutiny of the Hispaniola with Stevenson adopting the pseudonym Captain George North.

The novel opens in the seaside village of Black Hill Cove in south-west England (to Stevenson, in his letters[2] and in the related fictional play Admiral Guinea,[3] near Barnstaple, Devon) in the mid-18th century. Stevenson deliberately leaves the exact date of the novel obscure, the narrator, James "Jim" Hawkins, the young son of the owners of the Admiral Benbow Inn, writing that he takes up his pen "in the year of grace 17—." An old drunken seaman named Billy Bones arrives at the inn singing "that old sea-song"

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

Bones becomes a long-term lodger at the inn, only paying for about the first week of his stay. Jim quickly realizes that Bones is in hiding, and that he particularly dreads meeting an unidentified seafaring man with one leg. Some months later, Bones is visited by a mysterious sailor named Black Dog. Their meeting turns violent, Black Dog flees and Bones suffers a stroke. While Jim cares for him, Bones confesses that he was once the mate of a notorious late pirate, Captain Flint, and that his old crewmates want Bones' sea chest. Some time later, another of Bones' crew mates, a blind man named Pew, appears at the inn and forces Jim to lead him to Bones. Pew gives Bones a paper. After Pew leaves, Bones opens the paper to discover it is marked with the Black Spot, a pirate summons, with the warning that he has until ten o'clock to meet their demands. Bones drops dead of apoplexy (in this context, a stroke) on the spot. Jim and his mother open Bones' sea chest to collect the amount due to them for Bones' room and board, but before they can count out the money that they are owed, they hear pirates approaching the inn and are forced to flee and hide, Jim taking with him a mysterious oilskin packet from the chest. The pirates, led by Pew, find the sea chest and the money, but are frustrated that there is no sign of "Flint's fist". Customs men approach and the pirates escape to their vessel (all except for Pew, who is accidentally run down and killed by the agents' horses).

The book which made Stevenson famous, and has since become a classic among tales of adventure, to be ranked with "Robinson Crusoe". Its appearance did much more than establish him as a writer for boy readers. In fact, the book was not instantaneously a success among readers of that day, pledged to Captain Marry at and his imitators. But it brought Stevenson prominently to the notice of an elder public, able to perceive the uncommon power of romantic description which marked Treasure Island from previous tales of adventure. A couple of years passed before this yarn of buccaneers and mutiny on the high seas became one of the most popular of boys' books. Meanwhile its author, who had never been a campaigner like Mayne Reid in Mexico, or Ballantyne with the Hudson Bay Company, but had lived in a bedroom world of romance of his own making, first found himself recognized as a writer of note outside the small literary circle in which his work was esteemed.

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The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses is an 1888 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. It is both an historical adventure novel and a romance novel. It first appeared as a serial in 1883 with the subtitle "A Tale of Tunstall Forest" beginning in Young Folks; A Boys' and Girls' Paper of Instructive and Entertaining Literature, vol. XXII, no. 656 (Saturday, June 30, 1883) and ending in the issue for Saturday, October 20, 1883

The Black Arrow tells the story of Richard (Dick) Shelton during the Wars of the Roses: how he becomes a knight, rescues his lady Joanna Sedley, and obtains justice for the murder of his father, Sir Harry Shelton. Outlaws in Tunstall Forest organized by Ellis Duckworth, whose weapon and calling card is a black arrow, cause Dick to suspect that his guardian Sir Daniel Brackley and his retainers are responsible for his father's murder. Dick's suspicions are enough to turn Sir Daniel against him, so he has no recourse but to escape from Sir Daniel and join the outlaws of the Black Arrow against him. This struggle sweeps him up into the greater conflict surrounding them all.

In the reign of "old King Henry VI" (1422–1461, 1470–1471) and during the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487) the story begins with the Tunstall Moat House alarm bell being rung to begin mustering troops for its absent lord Sir Daniel Brackley, who intends to join the Battle of Risingham. It is then that the "fellowship" known as "The Black Arrow" headquartered in Tunstall Forest begins to strike with its "four black arrows" for the "four black hearts" of Brackley and three of his retainers: Nicholas Appleyard, Bennet Hatch, and Sir Oliver Oates, the parson. The rhyme that is posted in connection with this attack gets the protagonist Richard Shelton, ward of Sir Daniel, to become curious about the fate of his father Sir Harry Shelton. Having been dispatched to Kettley, where Sir Daniel was quartered, and sent to Tunstall Moat House by return dispatch, he falls in with a fugitive from Sir Daniel, Joanna Sedley, disguised as a boy and going by the alias of John Matcham. She is an heiress kidnapped by Sir Daniel, who wanted to obtain guardianship over her. Coincidentally, Sir Daniel was intending to marry Joanna to Dick himself; and, in her male disguise, Joanna brings up the matter to Dick, affording her the opportunity of feeling him out on the subject. Dick says he is not interested, but he does ask her if his intended bride is good-looking and of pleasant disposition.

While making their way through Tunstall Forest, Joanna tries to persuade Dick to turn against Sir Daniel in sympathy with the Black Arrow outlaws, whose camp they discover near the ruins of Grimstone manor. The next day they are met in the forest by Sir Daniel himself disguised as a leper and making his way back to the Moat House after his side was defeated at the Battle of Risingham. Dick and Joan then follow Sir Daniel to the Moat House. Here Dick changes sides when he finds out that Sir Daniel is the real murderer of his father and escapes injured from the Moat House. He is rescued by the outlaws of the Black Arrow with whom he throws in his lot for the rest of the story.

The second half of the novel, Books 3-5, tells how Dick rescues his true love Joanna from the clutches of Sir Daniel with the help of both the Black Arrow fellowship and the Yorkist army led by Richard Crookback, the future Richard III of England.

In writing this, his third, book for boys, Stevenson turned from scenes and characters of pure invention to real people and places of a minor incident of Scottish history. The Appin murder, which provides the turning point of the story, has thereby become known to thousands who had not before heard of Alan Breck or the wrongly condemned James Stewart. The Highlands, in their unsettled state after the '45, are made the setting for the adventures of the sober David Balfour, in whose prim ways and staid talk Stevenson found the contrast with the rebel spirits of the Highland Jacobites. Save for the change of year from 1752 to 175 1, he keeps very close to the historical facts, as may be seen from the outline of these latter in the chapter on the Appin murder on another page. A single episode of this kind, grafted on to imaginary adventures, just suited Stevenson's genius for romantic incident, while it did not lay upon him the physical strain of managing a full stage of historical characters in the manner of Dumas or Scott. Thus Kidnapped has the features of both an historical romance and a boy's book of adventure. In blending the two Stevenson satisfied his young readers, and compelled the admiration of such non-adventurous bookmen as Matthew Arnold and Henry James.

Stevenson's title for these tales of imagination clearly shows what he intended their character to be. Plainly they were not meant to be realistic. Their stilted, artificial style is out of keeping with such an object. They were evidently to be stories which are entertaining in the same way that the "Arabian Nights" is entertaining, with just as little pretence of realism. As a child in his grandfather's manse at Colinton he had devoured the eastern tales; the New Arabian Nights, written when he was twenty-eight, are a special form of literary invention which came easily from Stevenson's habit of investing the most ordinary places and people with the wildest romance. The stories are peculiar in that their artificial style leaves one ungripped by the horror of adventure, such as those of The Suicide Club. But the artificiality was clearly deliberate; when he wanted, no one better than Stevenson could write tales of horror to make the flesh creep. He did in fact project a series of this kind, of which only one or two were completed. But in the New Arabian Nights it is easy to see his precise aim at a lighter effect. No doubt the pleasure in the technical problem — at once Stevenson's curse, and the source of his unequalled prose — prompted this experiment.

Kidnapped is a historical fiction adventure novel by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. This work includes David Balfour and the sequel Catriona. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. Written as a "boys' novel" and first published in the magazine Young Folks from May to July 1886, the novel has attracted the praise and admiration of writers as diverse as Henry James, Jorge Luis Borges, and Seamus Heaney. Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751. A young and naive but resourceful, whose parents have recently died and who is out to make his way in the world. How he was Kidnapped and Cast away; his Sufferings in a Desert Isle; his Journey in the Wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland Jacobites; with all that he Suffered at the hands of his Uncle, Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws. As historical fiction, it is set around 18th-century Scottish events, notably the "Appin Murder", which occurred near Ballachulish in 1752 in the aftermath of the Jacobite Rising.

The book which put Stevenson's name in the mouth of the ' man in the street,' lifted him at a single bound to a place among men of the time and, by the still greater sensation which it created in America, led to the large income which soon afterwards he drew from the United States. The ear of a great public to whom his earlier writings were unknown was captured by this intense picture of the elements of good and evil in man's nature. It was hailed from pulpits and in the religious press as a great moral parable; though its moral quality, on close analysis, is seen to be more an illusion, due to the art of its writing, than the essence of the fable. Reduced to its simplest formula Jekyll and Hyde is a cry of terror at the potency for evil latent in the human soul. Such moral force as it has depends upon its assault on the nerves, not on its appeal to the heart. If not thus interpreted by the preachers of the time, it yet served the purpose of moving their hearers by the spectacle of the evil partner in the human ego, indulged in a moment ' when virtue slumbered,' coming in the end to destroy the good.

While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress of the inn and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune.

While going through the possessions of a deceased guest who owed them money, the mistress of the inn and her son find a treasure map that leads them to a pirate's fortune.

A huge inheritance ignites a murderous family feud. The last living beneficiaries, the two Finsbury Brothers, will stop at nothing to outlive each other-- and win the fortune. Helping the irascible, poverty-stricken Masterman Finsbury is his shy grandson Michael. Opposing them are his eccentric younger brother, Joseph Finsbury, and a pair of greedy nephews, Morris and John.

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CHAPTER I

Phyllis Ladd lost her mother at twelve; and this bereavement, especially terrible to an only child, brought with it two consequences that had a far-reaching effect on her character. An ardent, high-strung nature, acquainted so early with a poignant sorrow, gets an outlook on the world that is so just and true as to constitute a misfortune in itself. A child ought not to think; ought not to suffer; ought not to understand. Individuality, sympathy, sensibility awaken--qualities that go to make a charming human being--but which have to be paid for in the incessant balance of our complex existence. Phyllis' school-fellows were no longer the same to her; she felt herself a person apart; though she played as gaily as any of them, and chattered her head off, and tripped blithely along Chestnut Avenue entwined in the arms of her companions, she was aware, down in her secret heart, that she was "different."

At twelve, then, her path diverged from the commonplace, in which, as we all have to admit, however reluctantly, the chances for a happy life are best.

The second consequence of her mother's death was to bring her into contact with a scarcely known individual--her father. This grave, handsome man, who sat behind a newspaper at breakfast, and who was not seen again till dinner time; who drove away every morning behind a liveried coachman and a pair of shining bays to a region called "the office"; whose smile and voice were always a shy delight to her--this demigod, admired, unknown, from whom there emanated a delicious sense of security and strength, now suddenly drew her to his heart, and became her world, her all.

Robert T. R. Ladd was the president of the K. B. and O. Railway. Rich himself, and the son of a rich man, his interests in Carthage were varied and many, engaging his activities far beyond the great road that was associated with his name. Carthage was an old-fashioned city; and the boys who had grown up together and succeeded their fathers were clannish to a degree little known in the newer parts of this country. Joe, who was prominent in electricity and gas, might want to consolidate a number of scattered plants, and to that end would seek the assistance of Tom and Harry and Bob. George, perhaps, in forecasting the growth of Carthage a little too generously, was in temporary straits with his land-scheme--well, he would ask Tom and Bob to tide him over, making a company of himself, and taking them in. Frank and his brother, in converting their private bank into the Fifth National--induced as much as anything by the vanity of seeing their own names on their own greenbacks--would feel the need of a strong local man on the new directorate. Would Bob oblige them? "Why, with pleasure, though if somebody else would do as well--" "Oh, we must have you, old fellow."

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This early works by William Ernest Henley were originally published in the late 19th and early 20th century and we are now republishing them with a brand new introductory biography. 'A Selection of Poems' is a collection of some the best poetry by Henley, and includes 'Invictus', 'Lady Probationer', 'A Child', and many more. William Ernest Henley was born on 23rd August 1849, in Gloucester, England. In 1867, Henley passed the Oxford Local Schools Examination and set off to London to establish himself as a journalist. Unfortunately, his career was frequently interrupted by long stays in hospital due to a diseased right foot which he refused to have amputated. During a three year stay at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Henley wrote and published his collection of poetry 'In Hospital' (1875). This publication is noteworthy in particular for being some of the earliest examples of free verse written in England. Henley's best-remembered work is his poem “Invictus”, written in 1888. It is a passionate and defiant poem, reportedly written as a demonstration of resilience following the amputation of his leg.

This early work by William Ernest Henley was originally published in 1903 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'In Hospital' is a collection of poetry he wrote during a three year stay at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and is notable as one of the earliest examples of free verse written in England. William Ernest Henley was born on 23rd August 1849, in Gloucester, England. In 1867, Henley passed the Oxford Local Schools Examination and set off to London to establish himself as a journalist. Unfortunately, his career was frequently interrupted by long stays in hospital due to a diseased right foot which he refused to have amputated. Henley's best-remembered work is his poem “Invictus”, written in 1888. It is a passionate and defiant poem, reportedly written as a demonstration of resilience following the amputation of his leg.

Story of an adventurous search for treasure, written in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne in 1892.

The story is about a "sprawling, episodic adventure story, a comedy of brash manners and something of a detective mystery" It revolves around the abandoned wreck of the Flying Scud at Midway Island. Clues in a stamp collection are used to track down the missing crew and solve the mystery. It is only in the last chapter that different story elements become linked Stevenson described it as a "South Sea yarn" concerning "a very strange and defective plan that was accepted with open eyes for what seemed countervailing opportunities offered". Although the book sold well, reviews were mixed, with a The New York Times reviewer concluding that The Wrecker is a kind of blank-cartridge romance with a big explosion, which raises a dust, and if anything really has happened it escapes you in the flash and the cloud of smoke.The different, loosely connected stories reflected how Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne wrote the book. Each contributed different sections, but agreed to develop characters and descriptions of places they both knew well. The following are examples:The schooner Equator (1888-1953) inspired the story. Its remains are preserved in a shed at Marina Park at the Port of Everett, Washington..