Captain Blood
by Rafael Sabatini 1875–1950
The book, and the century it came out of.
An Irish physician who has given up soldiering is arrested for dressing a rebel’s wounds, sold as a slave in Barbados, and becomes the most dangerous captain in the Caribbean — chiefly because he keeps his word. Sabatini spoke five languages and chose English because, he said, all the best stories are told in it; this one gave Errol Flynn a career and the pirate novel its manners. Illustrated with 58 full-page plates — paintings by van de Velde the Elder, Bakhuizen and van de Velde the Younger among them.
Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine[1] and several other things besides, smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the sill of his window above Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater.
Captain Blood, by Rafael Sabatini, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Adventure & the Sea
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 352 pages
- Reading time
- about 7 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785501147188
58 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
1922, written by a man who had watched a real war
Sabatini spent the First World War in British intelligence as a translator. The swashbucklers he wrote afterwards sold in enormous numbers to a public that had had enough of modern warfare and wanted a war conducted by individuals with swords.
The novel opens with the Monmouth Rebellion and the Bloody Assizes of 1685, in which hundreds were hanged and hundreds more transported to the Caribbean as forced labour. The hero is not a pirate by choice; he is a doctor who was sentenced for treating a wounded man.
This book in culture: 3 versions
Most people meet a book like this one on a screen first. Here is what was made of it — and none of these is the book.
The whole afterlife of Captain Blood — screen, stage and beyond →
- 1924 Captain Blood David Smith
- 1935 Captain Blood Michael Curtiz
- 1991 Captain Blood: His Odyssey Andrei Prachenko
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
Captain Blood, first published 1922, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Adventure & the Sea shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501147188, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of Captain Blood?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. Rafael Sabatini's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 352 pages, which is roughly about 7 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
