The book which made Stevenson famous, and has since become a classic among tales of adventure, to be ranked with "Robinson Crusoe". Its appearance did much more than establish him as a writer for boy readers. In fact, the book was not instantaneously a success among readers of that day, pledged to Captain Marry at and his imitators. But it brought Stevenson prominently to the notice of an elder public, able to perceive the uncommon power of romantic description which marked Treasure Island from previous tales of adventure. A couple of years passed before this yarn of buccaneers and mutiny on the high seas became one of the most popular of boys'' books. Meanwhile its author, who had never been a campaigner like Mayne Reid in Mexico, or Ballantyne with the Hudson Bay Company, but had lived in a bedroom world of romance of his own making, first found himself recognized as a writer of note outside the small literary circle in which his work was esteemed.