Captain Blood 100th

Captain Blood: His Odyssey by Rafael Sabatini: The 100th Anniversary Annotated Edition

Announcing the 100^th Anniversary Annotated Edition of Captain Blood: His Odyssey by Rafael Sabatini, an author who knew that standing up to injustice required not only courage and honor, but wit as well–and often a sharp sword too!

First published in 1922, this famous modern classic has sold millions of copies and has remained in print since its first edition. It has inspired acclaimed novelists from Norman Mailer (“But I never enjoyed a novel more than Captain Blood”) to George MacDonald Fraser, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, and beyond. The novel is timeless, its fans young and old.

N. C. Wyeth’s illustration for the dust jacket and frontispiece of the first edition, and of many editions that followed.

It tells the story of Dr. Peter Blood, convicted of treason for treating a wounded rebel and sentenced to transportation in servitude to the Caribbean from whence he escapes, turns pirate, and, conflicted by his sense of honor and love for a woman who cannot forgive what he has become, scourges the Spanish Main. Notably, the novel, which has been continuously in print for almost one hundred years, inspired the 1935 film version that made Errol Flynn a star.

Far more than a mere historical swashbuckler of the common genre, this famous story argues that heroes can be fallible, admit mistakes, and still succeed; that life is a series of problems in search of honorable solutions; that although the world may be unfair, this is no reason not to fight to make it more fair—and that everywhere are villains, ranging from the those who tremble silently in deadly fecklessness to those who bluster loudly in brutal cowardice, and that humanity is always in need of those willing to stand up to them.

Such heroes have always been in demand, and some eras have mandated them for survival.

Our present era is one of them.

For most young adult readers there is one book that seizes their soul. Some of us were lucky enough that Captain Blood was ours.

Tierce parry made with the forte on the left, and a feint attack made against fencers who lift the hand when parrying tierce on the right. From Le maître d’armes, ou L’exercice de l’espée seule dans sa perfection by André Wernesson, sieur de Liancour. Paris: 1686. French National Library.

This special edition is being thoroughly annotated, to include many detailed notes and appendices, by noted piracy author and historian, maritime adventurer, and swordsman Benerson Little. He is assisted by the outstanding Rafael Sabatini biographer Ruth Heredia (Seeking Sabatini and Reading Sabatini). In addition to the annotations and appendices, the book will be thoroughly illustrated.

More publication details forthcoming soon! Tentative publication date is the fall of 2021, in time for the holiday season just prior to the 100th anniversary.