Pirate Books Cross Centuries in the North Carolina Collection
By Elizabeth H. Smith   

    The thrilling adventures of pirates have been a popular topic of writers and readers for more than three hundred years. Some recently-published pirate stories are actually a retelling of accounts that first appeared in London bookshops in the early eighteenth century following several years of increasing pirate attacks on the high seas. Joyner Library’s Verona Joyner Langford’s North Carolina Collection provides a large selection of pirate literature from four centuries.

• Greenville native Charles H. Whedbee’s Pirates, Ghosts, and Coastal Lore: the Best of Judge Whedbee (2004) is publisher John F. Blair’s golden anniversary tribute to the master storyteller of Outer Banks legends. Included in the thirteen stories selected from his five folklore collections are three pirate stories – “The Pirate Lights of Pamlico Sound,” centered around Ocracoke and Portsmouth islands; “The Female of the Species,” about Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and “Blackbeard’s Cup,” about Whedbee’s participation in a secret meeting on Ocracoke Island. The introduction reveals Whedbee’s final legendary act, which was to will the royalties from his books to his church, Saint Andrews By-The-Sea at Nags Head.
  
  
• Boogers and Boo-Daddies: the Best of Blair’s Ghost Stories (2004) includes twenty folk tales selected from each of the twenty Blair collections and presented in their order of publication. The pirate tale “Stede Bonnet” is selected from Nancy Roberts’s Blackbeard and Other Pirates of the Atlantic Coast (1993), which is a collection of eighteen stories about such pirates a Blackbeard, Bonnet, and Bonny.
  
  
• Lindley S. Butler’s Pirates, Privateers, & Rebel Raiders of the Carolina Coast (2000) includes eight stories of sea warfare, including sketches of  Blackbeard and Bonnet, that illustrate North Carolina’s maritime history from the early eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century.
  
  
• A General History of the Pyrates (1724), a second edition of the eighteenth century “best seller,” is available online through Joyner Library’s North Carolina History and Fiction Digital Library (NCH&FDL) <http://www.lib.ecu.edu/ncc/historyfiction/>. This vivid account of crime on the high seas includes chapters about Captains Teach and Bonnet and the “ladies” Read and Bonny, and a copper engraving picture of the most famous pirate, Blackbeard,

• The History of the Pyrates (1728), also available online in the NCH&FDL, contains biographical sketches of several pirates and presents a folded map of the Middle Part of America.
  
  
• A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates (1998) is a reprint of the 1724 first edition of A General History of the Pyrates. David Cordingly’s introduction reviews pirate literature and states that the author of the early eighteenth century pirate books “created the modern conception of pirates.”
  
  
• Among the nineteenth century pirate titles available online in the NCH&FDL is Benjamin Barker’s Blackbeard; or, The Pirate of the Roanoke. A Tale of the Atlantic (1847), an action-packed adventure that ends near the mouth of the Roanoke River.
  
  
• Frank Stockton’s novel about Stede Bonnet’s daughter, Kate Bonnet; the Romance of a Pirate’s Daughter (1902), is one of several early twentieth century historical fiction pirate titles available online in the NCH&FDL.

    Area residents as well as members of the ECU community are encouraged to use the North Carolina Collection on the third floor of Joyner Library. For more information call 328-6601 or visit the Web site at http://www.lib.ecu.edu/NCCollPCC/ncchome.htm.

    Elizabeth H. Smith is a librarian in the Verona Joyner Langford North Carolina Collection.