Book : Treasure Island (signet Classics) - Stevenson, Robert

-Titulo Original : Treasure Island (signet Classics)

-Fabricante :

Signet

-Descripcion Original:

Robert Louis Stevenson’s rousing seafaring classic. “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest- Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!” For sheer storytelling delight and pure adventure, Treasure Island has never been surpassed. From young Jim Hawkins’s first encounter with the sinister beggar Pew to the climactic battle with the most memorable villain in literature, Long John Silver, this novel has fired readers’ imaginations for generations. A rousing tale of treachery, greed, and daring, Treasure Island continues to enthrall readers of all ages.With an Introduction by Patrick Scott and an Afterword by Sara Levine Review “[Treasure Island is] the realization of an ideal, that which is promised in its provocative and beckoning map; a vision not only of white skeletons but also green palm trees and sapphire seas.”-G.K. Chesterton About the Author Throughout his life, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was plagued by ill health, which interrupted his formal education at Edinburgh University. Pursuing the life of a bohemian during his twenties and thirties, he traveled around Europe and formed the basis of his first two books, An Inland Journey (1878) and Travels with a Donkey (1879). Stevenson gained his first popular success with Treasure Island (1883). The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which sold forty thousand copies in six months, and Kidnapped appeared in 1886, followed by The Black Arrow (1888) and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). In 1888, he set out with his family for the South Seas, traveling to the leper colony at Molokai, and finally settling in Samoa, where he died. Patrick Scott is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina and co-editor of Studies in Scottish Literature. From 1996-2011 he was Director of Rare Books and Special Collections at Thomas Cooper Library, which has the largest Scottish literature collection outside Scotland. His earlier publications on Victorian boys’ books include essays on Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays and Kipling’s Stalky & Co.Sara Levine is the author of the novel Treasure Island!!! and the short story collection Short Dark Oracles. Her essays have been widely anthologized, and she teaches writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter IThe Old Sea Dog at the Admiral BenbowSquire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17-, and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.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 shoulders 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 cove 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 mans 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. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.This is a handy cove, says he, at length; and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?My father told him no, v