Interview with Captain Blood Annotator Benerson Little on the subjects of the Black Sails television series and more!
Category: Swordplay
It is with great pleasure that Treasure Light Press announces the acquisition of the James Speke Collection of historical documents associated with Caribbean piracy during the 1680s. The collection includes the original unpublished set of twenty-odd volumes of journals used by Rafael Sabatini as the factual basis for many of the adventures of his sanguinary hero, Captain Peter Blood.
Author Benerson Little, co-publisher and annotator at Treasure Light Press, has been searching for the papers, long thought lost, for more than a quarter century. Their rediscovery was the result of a combination of diligent research, serendipity, and thankfully thwarted skullduggery, including attempted forgeries and book-breaking, all of which was an adventure in itself.
The collection, long held by James Speke of Comerton, UK, disappeared after the amateur scholar’s death and passed, often unknowingly, through several hands, eventually ending up in an attic in a house in uptown New Orleans just off St. Charles Avenue, not far from the Columns Hotel.
For the moment we are limiting access to the papers and journals to ourselves, aided by an experienced conservator (thanks, Shell!) of antiquarian books and papers. At some point, however, given their obvious historical value, we may lend or donate the papers to a research institution for access by scholars, Sabatini fans, and the public at large, with emphasis on serious amateur historians who lack university credentials or access. Having been snubbed at times by some academic institutions ourselves, we’re sympathetic to the plight of amateur scholars producing quality research.
More importantly, per James Comerton’s wishes more than a century ago, we intend to publish the collection of journals, the most important of them in hardcover, the remainder digitally.
We’ll keep you advised on our progress with the collection. We look forward not only to further discoveries in the history of buccaneering, but also to learning how they shaped Sabatini’s famous novel, Captain Blood: His Odyssey.
Copyright Treasure Light Press LLC 2021. First posted April 1, 2021.
Olivia de Havilland, star of Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and numerous other films, posing with stage rapiers and smallswords, fencing masks, and star-to-be Errol Flynn in a series of Warner Bros. publicity stills for Captain Blood (1935). Most of these photographs were taken on the same day in July 1935 behind the Warner Bros. administrative building prior to the start of shooting. Ms. de Havilland passed away on July 26, 2020 at the age of 104.
First posted September 21, 2020. Last updated December 23, 2023.
“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
–Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche, 1921.
Indeed…
The quotation was many years ago inscribed over the doors to a building at Yale University, then, reportedly, covered up as being too plebeian–Sabatini was considered a “popular” author, not a literary one, by many. It was later restored.
Copyright Treasure Light Press LLC.
Treasure Light Press 