Treasure Island
When an old sea captain dies mysteriously in his parent's inn, young Jim Hawkins finds a treasure map in the captain's possessions that will spark a wild and adventures treasure hunt. Joined by a handful of untrustworthy pirates, he meets the antagonistic Long John Silver, a character whose fame transcends the tale. With Treasure Island (1883), author Robert Louis Stevenson invented the modern image of the pirate, without which we likely wouldn't have experienced Johnny Depp as the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. For more than a hundred years, Treasure Island has been finding its way to the screen. The first non-silent movie adaptation was directed by Victor Fleming, the director of The Wizard of Oz (1939).
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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for the novels Treasure Island (1883), Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Kidnapped (1886) and for the poetry collection A Child's Garden of Verses (1885).
Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but managed to write prolifically and travel widely despite his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Sidney Colvin, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. In 1890 he settled in Samoa, where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44.
A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson's critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, although today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018 he was ranked just behind Charles Dickens as the 26th-most-translated author in the world.
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