Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson reportedly began the story in 1881 while vacationing with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne at a Scottish cottage, drawing a map to entertain the boy. The serial first appeared in the magazine Young Folks under the pseudonym Captain George North before being published in book form in 1883 by Cassell.

Scholars have suggested possible influences including the Edinburgh cabinet-maker and town councilor Deacon Brodie, who led a double life as a burglar. Stevenson burned an early draft after his wife Fanny criticized it, rewriting the published version in roughly three days according to his own account.

Stevenson is buried on Mount Vaea in Samoa, where he lived the final years of his life on an estate he called Vailima. He died there in December 1894, and his tomb bears the famous 'Requiem' verse he had written years earlier.

The 1950 Disney version starring Bobby Driscoll as Jim Hawkins and Robert Newton as Long John Silver is the best-known and the one that popularized the pirate 'arrr' growl. Victor Fleming's 1934 MGM adaptation with Wallace Beary is also well regarded, as is the 1990 TNT television film with Charlton Heston.