Treasure Island and the Romance of the British Civil Service

Abstract

This article connects Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) to the rise and reform of the British Civil Service in the nineteenth century. It examines how the novel constructs the civil servant as a heroic figure, one that is both technically proficient and physically brave. Jim Hawkins combines the accounting skills of his parents with the courage of the pirates to become the ideal representative of Britain's administrative classes. In imagining its hero as an ideal civil servant, the novel has connections to the recruitment of young readers for the British civil service.