'Captain Blood' is one of the great adventure novels of the 20th century. Norman Mailer wrote of it; 'Glorious... I have never enjoyed a novel more than Captain Blood'.
During the turbulent reign of James II, Peter Blood, gentleman surgeon and former soldier barely escapes the gallows after his arrest for treating a wounded 'Monmouth' rebel.
He is unfairly sentenced to ten years indentured slavery on a Barbados plantation by the notorious 'Hanging Judge' Judge Jeffreys. Blood escapes his captivity and then embarks on a career as a pirate before clearing his name and returning to England to be reunited with the love of his life, Arabella Bishop.
A rollicking tale of piracy on a grand scale, this is the classic novel of maritime adventure and romance.
Sabatini dramatically brings the past to life with great accuracy and his swashbuckling tale bristles with excitement as we follow the high seas adventures of his honourable hero, Captain Blood. 
The book was the basis for the Hollywood film version starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland.
 
'Glorious... I have never enjoyed a novel more than Captain Blood' - Norman Mailer. 
'Captain Blood is the very beau ideal of a pirate' - New York Times Book Review. 
'Buckles never swashed more dashingly' - John Sutherland.
 
Captain Blood is marked by its exciting high seas adventures, exotic locations, historical elements, clever characters, romance, and its generous contribution of swashbuckling.
Rafael Sabatini (1875 - 1950) was an Italian/British writer of novels of romance and adventure. At a young age, Rafael was exposed to many languages. By the time he was seventeen, he was the master of five languages. He quickly added a sixth language - English - to his linguistic collection. After a brief stint in the business world, Sabatini went to work as a writer. He wrote short stories in the 1890s, and his first novel came out in 1902. Sabatini was a prolific writer; he produced a new book approximately every year. He consciously chose to write in his adopted language, because, he said, "all the best stories are written in English. "