The Black Arrow

In a lawless fifteenth-century England torn by the dynastic war of Lancaster and York, young Richard "Dick" Shelton is the ward of the powerful Sir Daniel Brackley. When an outlaw fellowship known as the Black Arrow begins posting its grim warnings — a black arrow, and a verse of vengeance, for each man it means to kill — Dick is drawn into a feud he barely understands, and learns at last that his own guardian was behind the murder of his father.

What follows is one of Stevenson's swiftest adventures: ambushes in the greenwood, an escape by boat, a shipwreck, a siege, and a running hunt for justice across a country where no authority can be trusted. At Dick's side, for much of the way, is a boy named John Matcham — who is not, in fact, a boy at all, but Joanna Sedley, the girl Sir Daniel means to marry off for gain. And late in the story a young, cold-eyed commander named Richard of Gloucester — the future Richard III — takes the field and knights the hero on the spot.

Stevenson wrote it for the same magazine that had carried Treasure Island, and once dismissed it as mere "tushery" for its picturesque old-fashioned speech. Generations of readers have disagreed. Beneath the swordplay and disguise runs a real coming-of-age — the education of a decent young man learning to keep his honour in a world where every power over him is corrupt.

This edition presents the complete novel in clean, modern typesetting, with an editor's foreword on the book's composition and craft, a biographical note, a guide to further reading, and questions for reflection.