The Pirate Super Pack # 1

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850, the only son of an engineer, Thomas Stevenson. Despite a lifetime of poor health, Stevenson was a keen traveller, and his first book An Inland Voyage (1878) recounted a canoe tour of France and Belgium. In 1880, he married an American divorcee, Fanny Osbourne, and there followed Stevenson's most productive period, in which he wrote, amongst other books, Treasure Island (1883), The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Kidnapped (both 1886). In 1888, Stevenson left Britain in search of a more salubrious climate, settling in Samoa, where he died in 1894.

James Fenimore Cooper was a nineteenth-century American author and political critic. Esteemed by many for his Romantic style, Cooper became popular for his depiction of Native Americans in fiction. Before Cooper considered himself a writer, he was expelled from Yale University, served as a midshipman for the United States Navy, and became a gentleman farmer. Cooper wrote many notable works including The Pioneers, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Red Rover, which was adapted and performed on stage in 1828. Cooper passed away in 1851 at the age of 61.

English author Daniel Defoe was at times a trader, political activist, criminal, spy and writer, and is considered to be one of England’s first journalists. A prolific writer, Defoe is known to have used at least 198 pen names over the course of a career in which he produced more than five hundred written works. Defoe is best-known for his novels detailing the adventures of the castaway Robinson Crusoe, which helped establish and popularize the novel in eighteenth century England. In addition to Robinson Crusoe, Defoe penned other famous works including Captain Singleton, A Journal of the Plague Year, Captain Jack, Moll Flanders and Roxana. Defoe died in 1731.