Most Notorious Pirates

Description

First published in 1724 following a marked increase in pirate attacks on the Spanish Main and the resultant Wapping executions, Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of Pirates is the most famous, and most influential, book about pirates ever written. Famed for its vigorous prose and uncanny understanding of the pirates’ way of life, Johnson’s volumes became the forerunners of the real-life criminal biography genre and inspired the likes of Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Fielding’s Jonathan Wild. Without them there would have been no Peter Pan, Treasure Island or Captain Jack Sparrow.