A General History of the Lives, Murders and Adventures of the Most Notorious Pir

Famed for its vigorous prose and uncanny understanding of the pirates’ way of life, Johnson’s volume became the forerunner 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.