Treasure Island

Stevenson's classic tale of buccaneers, a treasure map, and a hunt for buried gold introduced the character of Long John Silver and brought moral ambiguity into children's books. This new edition celebrates the ultimate book of pirates and examines its innovations and unrivalled place in literary history.

WITH NEW AND UPDATED MATERIAL Billionaire Warren Buffet, currently the third wealthiest man in the world, paid the lowest rate of tax among his office staff, including his receptionist. In 2006 the world's three biggest banana companies did nearly £400 million worth of business in Britain but paid just £128,000 in tax between them. In January 2009, US law enforcement fined Lloyds TSB $350 million after it admitted secretly channelling Iranian and Sudanese money into the US banking system. Tax havens are the most important single reason why poor people and poor countries stay poor. They lie at the very heart of the global economy, with over half the world trade processed through them. They have been instrumental in nearly every major economic event, in every big financial scandal, and in every financial crisis since the 1970s, including the latest global economic downturn. In Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson shows how this happened, and what this means for you.

A young slacker decides to live her life according to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure: “A rollicking tale, shameless, funny and intelligent” (The New York Times). When a college graduate with a history of hapless jobs (ice cream scooper, gift wrapper, laziest ever part-time clerk at The Pet Library) reads Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, she is dumbstruck by the timid design of her life. When had she ever dreamed a scheme? When had she ever done a foolish, overbold act? When had she ever, like Jim Hawkins, broken from her friends, raced for the beach, stolen a boat, killed a man, and eliminated an obstacle that stood in the way of her getting a hunk of gold? Convinced that Stevenson’s book is cosmically intended for her, she redesigns her life according to its Core Values: boldness, resolution, independence, and horn-blowing. Accompanied by her mother, her sister, and a hostile Amazon parrot that refuses to follow the script, our heroine embarks on a domestic adventure more frightening than anything she’d originally planned. Treasure Island!!! is the story of a ferocious obsession, told by an original voice—“insane, hilarious, and irreverent” (Alice Sebold). “Highly original . . . will keep you entertained in spite of (or more accurately, because of) its toxic narrator.” —Library Journal “A hoot.” —Kirkus Reviews

An innkeeper's son finds a treasure map that leads him to a pirate's fortune.

First published as a serialized children's story in 1881-1882, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island has become an enduring classic. It has all the elements of a great adventure story: a plot full of twists and turns, an escalating sense of treachery and impending disaster, and a quintessential villain. Teenager Jim Hawkins finds a map titled "Treasure Island" in the belongings of a stricken lodger at the Admiral Benbow Inn in 1750s England. He soon finds himself aboard the schooner Hispaniola with a crew of disguised pirates headed to the Caribbean on a quest to find buried treasure. Long John Silver, the peg-legged cook, is the leader of this wretched crew. He is both engaging and ruthless, feared by even his barbarous accomplices, and a shape-shifter, pretending to be Jim's good friend and enemy, secretly plotting a mutiny. When mutiny begins, Jim must save the day. This beloved adventure story is pure fiction--but fiction well grounded in historical and geographical reality. In The Annotated Treasure Island, editor and researcher Simon Barker-Benfield meticulously and lovingly annotates this voyage, offering crucial factual information, a sociopolitical context, and clear technical explanations that bring you closer to the action. Lavishly illustrated with pictures of nautical equipment, parts of ships, and period maps, The Annotated Treasure Island brings the seafaring vernacular to life. You'll learn about "blocks," "backstays," and "shrouds." And you'll see Jim and the crew handle the Hispaniola, whether it's the "simple" chore of raising the anchor--which in a similar, real vessel could require three hours'-worth of hauling in a very slimy cable six inches at a time--or the difficulty and meaning of "warping" and "putting a man in the chains" in order to take depth soundings. The story illustrations by Louis Rhead (1857-1926) deftly draw out the escalating dramatic tension. Would all the risk and hardship have been worth it? Just how much treasure was the crew after? What could one have bought with 700,000 pounds sterling in the 1700s? Even that question is answered in this newly annotated edition: it would have been enough to buy and outfit a fleet of eleven 104-gun battleships of the period. Seven hundred thousand pounds sterling was serious money, enough money that some men would do almost anything to get it.

When Jim Hawkins finds the map to a legendary treasure, he embarks on a perilous voyage to claim it. His journey leads him to uncover a pirate mutiny, a chance meeting with a marooned misfit and ultimately to the discovery of what kind of person he wants to be. Robert Louis Stevenson's beloved coming-of-age adventure story is given a bold new stage adaptation by Governor General's Award winning playwright Nicolas Billon.

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 to a pirate fortune as well as great danger.

Squire trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the begin ning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treas ure 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 shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails and the sabre cut across one cheek.