First edition in book form, with all the points of first issue, of Stevenson's classic adventure story of "buccaneers and buried gold", his first great success as a novelist.

The Book
The original title was 'The Sea Cook', then changed by the publishers into 'The Treasure Island' upon first publication in 'Young Folks' magazine, were the story was serialized from October 1881 to January 1882 under the pseudonym "Captain George North". It was only with the appearance of the book-form edition, however, that Stevenson's pirate tale received serious attention and "was immediately hailed by critics as a classic" (Grolier).

The book was published on 14 November 1883. The first printing comprised 2,000 copies; of these, the first 750 were bound up with the advertisements dated "5G-783" ( July 1883), present here. Copies with the July advertisements are known in different cloth colours, including green, red, and blue, with no established priority (see Carter, p. 154).

The Map
'Treasure Island' was inspired by the now-famous treasure map the author had drawn to entertain his young stepson - to whom the book is dedicated
- "on a rainy day in the Scottish Highlands" (Grolier). In a later essay, Stevenson remembered: "[the map] was elaborately and (I thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance "Treasure Island". The map was the most of the plot. I might almost say it was the whole. A few reminiscences of Poe, Defoe, and Washington Irving, a copy of Johnson's Buccaneers, the name of the Dead Man's Chest from Kingsley's At Last, some recollections of canoeing on the high seas, and the map itself, with its infinite, eloquent suggestion, made up the whole of my materials" (Stevenson).