'Treasure Island, The Companion Edition' Presents the Novel in Its 1883 First-Edition Text, with the First Edition's Own Chart, Restored from a Scan of the 1883 Printing

It began with a map

In the late summer of 1881, in a rainy Braemar holiday house, Robert Louis Stevenson drew an island to amuse his thirteen-year-old stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, coloured it, named Spy-glass Hill and Skeleton Island, marked his crosses, and then wrote the novel to fit the chart he had drawn. Serialized in the boys' paper Young Folks (1881-82) under the byline "Captain George North," the story appeared as a book from Cassell & Company, London, in November 1883, with the chart itself reproduced facing the title page. A new Companion Classics edition, Treasure Island, The Companion Edition, presents the complete novel, all thirty-four chapters in six parts, 67,655 words, unabridged, in the text of that 1883 first book edition, taken from Project Gutenberg eBook #120 and checked chapter by chapter against a scan of the 1883 first edition (first edition, second printing). The dedication to "S.L.O.", Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, the stepson of the paint-box, and Stevenson's verses "To the Hesitating Purchaser" stand in their first-edition places.

And the chart is here

The 1883 chart, the facsimile of Flint's chart, with its three red crosses, the red "Bulk of treasure here," the Savannah inscription recording that J.F. gave it to W. Bones, mate of the Walrus, in July 1754, and the printed note that J. Hawkins struck out the latitude and longitude, has been restored from the scan of the 1883 edition and is reproduced as the frontispiece, in its first-edition position facing the title page. This is the map as Stevenson's first readers saw it: drawn, by his own later account in "My First Book," a second time from memory after the original drawing was lost on its way to the publishers.

The story

The story that invented the modern pirate is here entire: the brown old seaman with the sabre cut at the Admiral Benbow; the black spot, delivered by a blind beggar whose stick taps on the frosty road; a squire who cannot keep a secret hiring a ship and, with it, a mutiny; a boy in an apple-barrel overhearing the whole conspiracy; a marooned man three years alone with his goats and his repentance; and Long John Silver, one-legged, silver-tongued, with a parrot named for the dead captain, the most charming dangerous man in English fiction, whom Stevenson modelled, by his own letter, on his friend W. E. Henley.

Companion material

Around the novel, the companion material, all of it original to this edition, includes an introduction telling how the book was made, the map at Braemar, the family readings aloud, the Young Folks serial, and the stepson's part in it; a Who's Who of the Hispaniola's company, seventeen entries from Jim Hawkins and Silver to Ben Gunn and Captain Flint the parrot; four explainers, covering the nautical terms and shipboard life the story assumes (from the coracle to the black spot's pirate legalism), the 18th-century money of pieces of eight and the £700,000 hoard, the real pirate history behind Flint's crew (the real Israel Hands, the practice of marooning, and the one documented case of buried treasure), and how Stevenson builds suspense; a short life of Robert Louis Stevenson; a reading schedule; and forty-four discussion questions, spoiler-fenced part by part, so a book club can take the hunt in Stevenson's own order.

Book Club Kit

Alongside the book, the Treasure Island, Book Club Kit offers the edition's discussion material as a printable PDF (29 pages, US Letter) for reading groups: a three-meeting reading plan (Parts One & Two; Parts Three & Four; Parts Five & Six); the edition's Who's Who and its four explainers in full; all forty-four discussion questions re-arranged into the three meetings so nobody reads a spoiler before its part; and the kit's signature activity, "Reading Flint's Chart," which prints the restored 1883 chart at full page and sets ten things to find on it, the scale of miles, the mast-named hills, the warning of the strong tide, the three red crosses, the Savannah inscription, with a full answer key at the back. The kit is available for $7 through the editor's Payhip store: https://payhip.com/horaceharriottjr

Availability

Treasure Island, The Companion Edition is available now as an eBook ($9.99) through Payhip: https://payhip.com/horaceharriottjr, and in The Classics and Companions Shop on the editor's Linktree. Print editions follow on Amazon (paperback, $14.99; hardcover, $24.99). The text and the 1883 chart are public domain worldwide (Robert Louis Stevenson died in 1894); all companion material is original to this edition. This is an independent publication, not affiliated with or endorsed by any Stevenson estate, museum, or screen adaptation.

About the editor

Horace Harriott Jr. is a New York-based author and editor of more than two dozen books, including The Side Hustle Handbook, Master Playbook and The Ultimate Commissary Cookbook. This edition is part of his Companion Classics series of reading-together editions of public-domain classics.

About the book

Treasure Island, The Companion Edition, Robert Louis Stevenson (author), Horace Harriott Jr. (editor). Companion Classics, independently published, October 2026. Text: the first book edition (Cassell & Company, London, November 1883), via Project Gutenberg eBook #120, collated against a scan of the 1883 first edition, second printing; one PG transcription error corrected and recorded (Chapter XVII's heading numeral); six parts, thirty-four chapters; 67,655 words, with the dedication and verses; the 1883 chart restored and reproduced as frontispiece; interior proof 296 pages, 6 x 9 in.