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Inside the reading room.
Follow the route from an event to its surviving account. Identify the author, edition, translation and later interpretation before borrowing the most memorable detail.
Guides in this topic.
7 guidesPirate myths, weighed against the record.
The interesting answer is often more specific than “true” or “false.”
Treasure Island: reading the fiction beside the pirate history
A map, a sea cook, a parrot and a missing fortune make an extraordinary novel, not a recovered pirate log.
Robinson Crusoe and Selkirk: two island stories, different evidence
Compare the fictional narrator’s salvage and authority with the sailor described in Rogers’s voyage.
Which Exquemelin are you reading?
The author’s name can conceal a translation, a revised edition or a much later adaptation.
Reading the General History without inheriting every story
The 1724 book mixes biographies, documents, trial narratives and an unmistakable authorial voice.
How many people were in a pirate company?
The answer changes with the date, vessel, task and kind of evidence being counted.
A calendar entry is not the whole manuscript
How to read the colonial records behind a familiar pirate story without giving the printed summary more authority than it has.