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 shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest --Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum....
Just as a couple of non-fiction titles (Exquemelin and Johnson) had an outsized influence on public perceptions of piracy, so too did three fictional titles have an outsized influence on such perceptions. However, because what we recognize as the modern novel is a fairly late development in literature, what arguably are the most influential fictional works about piracy were penned much later than their non-fiction counterparts.
The first substantial fictional works about piracy appeared early in the 18th century. Among these may be counted such works as Adrian van Broeck's The Life and Adventures of Capt. John Avery (1709, which DNB pointedly notes is [f]iction, with scarcely a substratum of fact) and Daniel Defoe's The Life, Adventures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton (1720, notable for its depiction of the homosexual relationship between the eponymous hero and his religious mentor). First Editions of both titles are rare and expensive, although the Defoe title has since been reprinted several times:
Apart from long-form fiction, other early works that featured pirates included poems, such as Lord Byron's The Corsair (1814, so popular that its initial printing of 10,000 copies sold out the first day of publication); short stories, such as Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug (1843, a tale which not only involved Captain Kidd, but which also popularized cryptography and heavily influenced RLS); and Gilbert & Sullivan's 1879 comic opera, The Pirates of Penzance (the image below right is from the Harold Kanthor Collection at the University of Rochester):
As popular as these works were, none of them had the influence on public perceptions of piracy that three later fictional works would exert.
Treasure Island, the most influential work of piratical fiction ever written, began life as a serial publication (not unlike Poe's Gold Bug, one of several influences on Stevenson's own tale). Serialized in the British children's magazine Young Folks in 17 weekly installments from 1881-1882 (under the title The Sea Cook; or, Treasure Island: A Story for Boys), the tale made its first appearance in book form in 1883. (The map, below left, is from the First Edition novel held by the University of South Carolina. The illustration by Edward A. Wilson, below right, is from the Limited Editions Club version of 1941, held by the same institution):
Robert Louis Stevenson's first successful novel, Treasure Island's heady mix of tropical islands, buried treasure and one-legged pirates has spawned so many imitators that it's become well-nigh fruitless to try and keep track of them all. Perhaps more importantly for book collectors, the title has been well served by some of the best book illustrators of all time. Among some of the better-known artists associated with the title are N. C. Wyeth (below left) and Frank Godwin (below right):
The influence of this great work of piratical literature is only partly accounted for by its numerous reprints. The title also has been much beloved by Hollywood (over 50 different TV and film versions to date), by radio and theater (over two dozen major adaptations to date), and a wide range of authors have tried their hands at penning both prequels and sequels to the work....
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