Fans pick 100 books like Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates

Walter Langley was a 19th C English artist who specialized in watercolor paintings. His journey began in the Industrial city of Birmingham UK where he developed great skill and mastery of watercolor. His career took off when he moved to the Cornwall fishing village of Newlyn. There he found the subjects and characters that would feature in his work and with which he would make his name. He was elected to the prestigious RI in London. 

This book is a biographical in-depth study of his life and work featuring numerous full-color plates. The incredible skill sets in the paintings he made show that watercolor as a medium, used with passion and care, deserves total respect. In the hands of a true master any subject can be rendered in a convincing and moving manner.

When I was a boy, like many others, I was infatuated with tales of adventure. Treasure Island, Last of the Mohicans to name but two. At that time the illustrations in these books just leapt off the paper and fired my imagination. It was later when I became a serious student of art that I discovered that many of these illustrations were made by N.C.Wyeth. An American artist (19th-20thc) whose later son, Andrew Wyeth, became world-famous. 

In Treasure Island, there is a painting of Blind Pugh, a ferocious pirate. I lost track of the times I tried as a boy to copy this work, an incredible figure painting full of movement and atmosphere.

Rowland Hilder was born in the USA but migrated to the UK as a young boy. He made his name as a brilliant watercolor artist. What set Hilder apart from other practitioners was his love of the English Landscape in winter. This treatment endeared him to the thousands of Hilder followers. This was a new genre at the time (mid 20th century). The book is semi-autobiographical in addition to the numerous full-colour palates. It tells of his early childhood and moving to the rural countryside of Kent in England. As a student, he went to Goldsmith’s College London, and later became an R.I. Wonderful book for Hilder fans.

Walker Evans was a documentary photographer. He was one of the first to discover that the photos he took of the mundane or overlooked could contain as much or more merit and compassion than the grandest scene. His work has a social consciousness which was not always appreciated at the time (1930s) in an age of great depression in the USA. He was dispatched by the Farm Agency Commission to document rural oppression in the plains and deep south of America, and his photographs hold nothing back. They tell it like it was.

The original chronicle of the massive pirate outbreak along the China coast in the early 19th century. Written by a Chinese amateur historian, he makes his patriotic agenda clear on every page: to boost the maligned reputation of China’s imperial navy in allegedly quashing the pirates (by twisting the historical truth, to put it mildly). The main characters and incidents are based on fact, while he fills in the gaps with private conversations and meetings that no one could have been privy to. Translated into English by a German missionary in 1835, this mix of fact and speculation is the ur-document on which every western account of these pirates is based. Newer editions include an eyewitness narrative by a British sailor who spent six months as a captive of the pirates. Essential and entertaining reading which should be taken with large pinches of (pilfered) salt.

Formerly a professor of History at the University of Macau, Robert Antony has made it his life’s work to study piracy along the China coast. Among his several books on the topic, this one digs deepest into the development of piracy in the early 19th century, citing weather, economic, and political conditions, told in a highly readable narrative style. Among the entertaining details, he tracks the average annual going rates for ransom and stolen goods. He writes in an agreeable, relaxed manner, with a number of incidents told as edge-of-your-seat thrillers. The title itself was a common term of invective to describe Chinese pirates. An essential read for students of piracy.

This is the third book in the awesome Isles of Storm and Sorrow trilogy. The hero, Marianne, is not only a queen and a mage but an amazing, kick-ass pirate. That means a lot of the adventure takes place on what for us are historic sailing ships – which I love – as well as in and around the various wonderfully described islands. Marianne’s moral struggles also fascinate me, particularly in Vulture. How easy is it to draw the line between fighting back for the right reasons and taking revenge simply for the pleasure of it? It’s a dilemma we’ve touched on in our own books, and an area of ambiguity that makes Marianne a particularly satisfying character to travel with.

Set during the War of 1812 this is a great pirate romance. It tells the story of innocent, sheltered Merry Wilding, an American living in Virginia with her maiden aunt. Merry has a talent for drawing faces from memory, a talent her brother, an American spy will use to his benefit, exposing her to pirates and worse. On her way to England with her aunt, she is kidnapped. Taken to a pirate ship, Merry meets the English pirate, Devon, who remembers her from a night long ago. 

The writing is superb, the characters courageous, heartwarming, and very special; the descriptions vivid. The story is a wonder to read. You will be swept away on a pirate ship to experience adventures, battles at sea, storms, death, humor, and love.

Almost A Lady is filled with love, passion, and adventure for the restless soul. It has a fiery heroine who isn’t afraid to fight for her life, and the most ideal roguish pirate scoundrel one longs for in a Historical Romance. The perfect enemies-to-lovers tale that will have you staying up late for more. I loved this book because it revealed far more than what a traditional HR setting could be. It gave me love and peril and a hot slow-burn of fervor and intensity one needs in a great Historical Romance.

This book uses seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century piracy as one of its case studies to make innovative arguments about global history. Through a discussion of piracy, Benton seeks to transform our understanding of the significance of oceanic space. Though empires might assert control over territories and their inhabitants, in fact, their jurisdiction, or sovereignty, was uneven – thinner in some places than others, and only realized in fits and starts.

For Benton, the spatial figure of the corridor as a conduit for law and jurisdiction is vital to understanding the geography and movement of early modern imperial power. Inconsistencies in the application of prize law, the regulation of privateering, and the prosecution of piracy graphically show the unevenness of sovereignty at sea and the ways by which all types of mariner attempted to mark out jurisdictional corridors as they traversed the world's waters.