However, it is also an ‘adult’ book in the sense that there are no easy conclusions. Yes, Treasure Island is a children’s book, and it has the psychological climbing bars that draw children to books like Superman, Jane Eyre or Harry Potter – the young protagonist (yes, a boy) is not encumbered with parents who might object to him staying out late alone (but not really vulnerable) in a strange new environment endowed with special status and unexpected powers and he comes into great riches. That is, the story of Jim Hawkins’ adventures on Treasure Island was put together by someone who knew exactly how to write an exciting story “in the ancient” – and enduring – way.

They are both right, but Stevenson’s own blurb – like the book itself – nails it most squarely.

Stevenson himself wrote, “To the Hesitating Purchaser” offering “storm and adventure, heat and cold…buccaneers and buried gold, and all the old romance retold, exactly in the ancient way”. OUP promises “danger”, “pirates”, “excitement” and “action” on the back cover and “bonus features” on the inside front cover. For those who have not read Robert Louis Stevenson’s pirate adventure story, that might beg the question of what it is, exactly, that justifies such bare-faced praise and, more importantly, the re-issue of the book by Oxford University Press 131 years after it first appeared.

The HNS magazine allows 300 words for a review, but Treasure Island really only needs four: a cracking good read.

Treasure island books