The novel was the work of Robert Louis Stevenson. Born in 1850, he was an accomplished novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer who, alongside Treasure Island, also wrote two other hugely popular works of fiction: Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, together with ten other novels, and over 20 short stories.

The son of a prosperous civil engineer, he was expected to follow the family profession but went on instead to study law at Edinburgh University. He grew up in a devout and serious Presbyterian household, though he later came to reject Christianity and declared himself an atheist, leading to alienation from his parents.

In his early twenties he became afflicted with a severe respiratory illness from which he was to suffer for the rest of his life – much of it spent searching for a climate kind to his fragile health. Contemporary views are that he had tuberculosis or bronchiectasis.

Stevenson travelled extensively all his life and in 1880, following a trip across the USA he married an American, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, who he had met and travelled with two years earlier.

For the next seven years Stevenson searched in vain for somewhere to live which was suitable to his state of health. He spent extended periods of time in Scotland, England and France where, for a time, he enjoyed almost complete happiness. During these years, in spite of his ill health, he produced the bulk of his best-known work, including his first widely popular book Treasure Island.

In 1888, Stevenson set sail with his family from San Francisco and for nearly three years he wandered the eastern and central Pacific, stopping for extended stays at the Hawaiian Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia and the Samoan Islands. For a time, the sea air and thrill of adventure restored his health, and in 1890 he purchased about 400 acres of land in Upolu, an island in Samoa, where he established himself an estate with his wife, and even took a Samoan name. His influence spread to the Samoans, who consulted him for advice, and he soon became involved in local politics, gaining much respect from the islanders.

On 3 December 1894, while straining to open a bottle of wine, Stevenson collapsed and died within a few hours, probably of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was only forty-four years old. His tombstone epigraph was translated into a Samoan song of grief which is well known and still sung in Samoa today.

He said of the story; “It was to be a story for boys; no need of psychology or fine writing; and I had a boy at hand to be a touchstone. Women were excluded… and then I had an idea for Long John Silver from which I promised myself funds of entertainment; to take an admired friend of mine… to deprive him of all his finer qualities and higher graces of temperament, and to leave him with nothing but his strength, his courage, his quickness, and his magnificent geniality.”

A close friend of Stevenson and occasional literary collaborator, William Ernest Henley, an energetic, talkative man with a wooden leg, is often cited as the model for Long John Silver. Stevenson worked on the first draft of the story while living in both Scotland and London – he wrote quickly – completing the first 15 chapters in as many days.

During the 19th century the desert island romance style of novel, which features shipwrecked or marooned characters confronted by treasure seeking pirates or angry natives had become one of the most popular fictional styles in Great Britain. It is obvious that Treasure Island was the climax of this development.

Stevenson borrowed ideas and material from many different literary sources: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), S. H. Burney’s The Shipwreck (1816), Sir Walter Scott’s The Pirate (1822) and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot (1823). More specifically, in an 1884 letter, Stevenson admitted; “Treasure Island came out of Charles Kingsley’s At Last, where I got the Dead Man’s Chest — that was the seed — and out of the great Captain Johnson’s History of the Notorious Pyrates.” He admits that he took the idea of Captain Flint’s pointing skeleton from Edgar Allan Poe’s tale of buried treasure The Gold-Bug.

Also, that he constructed Billy Bones’ history from the pages of Washington Irving, one of his favourite writers.

From these various sources and ideas, Stevenson skilfully constructed the definitive pirate adventure novel; a coming-of-age story noted for its fine plot, suspense, atmosphere, characters and action, as well as influencing forever the popular perceptions of pirates such as treasure maps marked with an ‘X’, schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen bearing parrots on their shoulders.

The story was originally serialised in the children’s magazine Young Folks between 1881 and 1882 under the title Treasure Island, or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola and credited to the pseudonym ‘Captain George North’. It was first published as a book in 1883.

Treasure Island is set in the mid 1700s and tells the tale of a young boy named Jim Hawkins. Enchanted by the idea of locating treasure buried by deceased pirate Captain Flint, Jim enlists the help of Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey. They charter a sailing voyage to the Caribbean Island, but unbeknown to them, a large number of the crew they have hired are pirates, including Long John Silver. The pirates want the treasure for themselves, and once the ship has reached the island, a battle commences between the pirates and the crew members.

Jim, who gets separated from the rest of the loyal crew, finds a marooned Englishman on the island, Ben Gunn, who agrees to help in return for a share of the treasure and safe passage to England. When the pirates arrive at the treasure site marked on the map, they find the treasure gone. Livesey, Trelawney and Gunn, in a last stand, overcome the pirates. It turns out that Ben Gunn had long ago found the treasure and moved it to his cave. The loyal crew sail back to England, but Long John Silver manages to escape along the way. When they reach England, they divide up the treasure.