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"Treasure Island" (1883) by Robert Louis Stevenson
Wednesday 2 February 2022, by
One of the best books for younger readers ever written - anyone who has not read this book around the age of 12 years or so has missed something important in the growing-up experience!
The writing is splendidly taut, the story moves along steadily at a nice pace, the bad guys are really well done – unlike the current mythology, pirates are not portrayed as romantic rebels or gentlemen of fortune revelling in their marginal ways, but as the savage cut-throat scum that they really were – and we meet one of the outstanding characters in all fiction, the extraordinarily resourceful, capable, very dangerous and deceptively likeable Long John Silver, who actually gets away at the end!
A masterful tale that needs to be revisited years after that first exciting reading experience to be fully appreciated.
With all of the 108 (!!) remarkable illustrations of the first 1883 edition by the celebrated Anglo-American illustrator Louis Rhead.
(68,000 words)
An e-book is available for downloading below.