A General History of the Pyrates

A 1724 book attributed to Captain Charles Johnson that recounts the lives of prominent pirates and helped shape their popular image.

Captain Charles Johnson: The pseudonym on the title page of the 1724 pirate history, whose author's identity remains disputed. The name attached to the book has never been securely matched to a known writer.
Blackbeard: The English pirate Edward Teach, active in the Caribbean and western Atlantic before his death in 1718. The book’s dramatic portrait helped establish Blackbeard as piracy’s archetypal villain.
Pirate biography: A life story focused on a pirate’s career, exploits, and fate. The book organizes much of its material as individual pirate lives.
Treasure Island: An 1883 adventure novel by Robert Louis Stevenson about a treasure hunt involving pirates. Stevenson drew on the pirate tradition the book helped popularize.
Nathaniel Mist: An English printer and publisher associated with early eighteenth-century journalism and suspected by some scholars of writing as Captain Charles Johnson. His career and political journalism inform one influential authorship theory.
Anne Bonny: An Irish-born pirate who operated in the Caribbean and was captured with Calico Jack Rackham’s crew in 1720. Her biography is among the book’s best-known accounts of women pirates.
Pirate code: A set of shipboard rules adopted by some pirate crews to govern conduct and divide shares. The book describes crew articles that shaped later ideas about pirate democracy.
Long John Silver: A charismatic, one-legged pirate and cook in Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island. The character carries forward the book’s legacy of memorable pirate personalities.
William Taylor: An English bookseller and publisher active in the early eighteenth century. He published the first edition in 1724 and a second volume in 1728.
Mary Read: An English pirate who served with Calico Jack Rackham and was captured in 1720. The book’s account of her life is a major source for her popular legend.

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