Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) wrote Treasure Island from a map he drew to amuse his stepson, and in doing so invented most of what the world now pictures when it pictures pirates: the one-legged sea cook, the black spot, the buried chest, the parrot. Almost none of it is historical. The song beginning “Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest” is his own invention, built from a West Indian place name he found in a book. He spent his last years in Samoa, where he died at forty-four.