Robert Louis Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland and began writing when he was a boy. He finished his first book whe he was sixteen.

He went to many different countries in his life. He was often dangerously ill and he wanted to find a place with warm weather where he could live and do his writing. In 1888, he went by ship to the Pacific islands, and after 1890 he lived on the island of Samoa, with his wife, mother and son. The Samoans called him "Tusitala" - "the story-teller".

He wrote many different books and stories. Treasure Island (1883) is his most famous book but Dr Jekyll and My Hyde (1886) is also very well-known. Stevenson died in 1894 on Samoa.

A young boy, Jim Hawkins, lives quietly by the sea with his mother and father. One day, Billy Bones comes to live with them and from that day everything is different. Jim meets Long John Silver, a man with one leg, and Jim and Long John Silver go far across the sea in a ship called the Hispanioia to Treasure Island.