Name: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

One of 2,000 copies in the first printing, and of the first 750 containing original adverts.

In an essay published in 1894, Stevenson – by then living in the tropics himself on the South Sea island of Samoa – described the novel’s origins. Rather than being inspired by direct experience (though Stevenson was well travelled), it began during a cold, wet Scottish summer with the imaginative act of drawing a map: "I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance Treasure Island."

The map, he said, provoked ‘the future character of the book,’ and soon he was sketching out a list of chapters. Stevenson also acknowledged his influences: ‘No doubt the parrot once belonged to Robinson Crusoe. No doubt the skeleton is conveyed from Poe.’

Treasure Island was originally serialised in the children’s weekly Young Folks between 1881 and 1882, under the title The Sea-Cook: A Story for Boys. When preparing the book edition, Stevenson knew the map was essential and sent it with the manuscript to Cassell & Co. 

To his dismay it was lost. With the help of his father, the engineer Thomas Stevenson, he recreated it – a process he found challenging: "It is one thing to draw a map at random, set a scale in one corner of it at a venture, and write up a story to the measurements. It is quite another to have to examine a whole book, make an inventory of all the allusions contained in it, and, with a pair of compasses, painfully design a map to suit the data. I did it; and the map was drawn again in my father’s office, with embellishments of blowing whales and sailing ships, and my father himself brought into service a knack he had of various writing, and elaborately forged the signature of Captain Flint, and the sailing directions of Billy Bones."

Despite his best efforts, Stevenson regarded the published map as somehow inauthentic: ‘it was never Treasure Island to me.’ Nevertheless, it was certainly the Treasure Island to its numerous readers ever since. It appears on the frontispiece of the first edition as an irresistible invitation to adventure and foreshadowing of the dangers awaiting those who attempt to penetrate the island’s secrets: ‘Strong tide here’; ‘Skeleton Island’; ‘Ye Spyeglass Hill’.

Ever since the novel’s publication, there has been speculation about the specific location of Treasure Island. However, as the map specifies, the exact longitude and latitude of its location have been ‘struck out by J. Hawkins’.


Ex Carta

 was Stevenson’s starting point, the image from which the entire novel grew. Its ports, capes, and the famous red cross marking the treasure helped establish the adventure map as both plot device and symbol of imaginative quest.

 by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) was an immediate success with the reading public and hugely influential on both the adventure novel and fiction for younger readers. It remains an exhilarating read: a breathless tale of peril and derring-do, taking its young protagonist Jim Hawkins from the wild coast of Cornwall to the tropics of the West Indies. Stevenson established many of the standard tropes of pirate lore – including that of the treasure map – that still serve as the basis of the 

 film series as well as many other films, television shows, books, and video games.

(1997–) makes evident the profound extent to which 

 continues to exert an influence on popular culture internationally.

In an essay published in 1894, Stevenson – by then living in the tropics himself on the South Sea island of Samoa – described the novel’s origins. Rather than being inspired by direct experience (though Stevenson was well travelled), it began during a cold, wet Scottish summer with the imaginative act of drawing a map:

I made the map of an island; it was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance Treasure Island.

The map, he said, provoked ‘the future character of the book,’ and soon he was sketching out a list of chapters. Stevenson also acknowledged his influences: ‘No doubt the parrot once belonged to Robinson Crusoe. No doubt the skeleton is conveyed from Poe.’