Charles Johnson (pirate biographer)

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Captain Charles Johnson is the author of the 1724 book A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, though his identity remains a mystery. No record of a captain by this name exists, and circumstantial evidence suggests "Charles Johnson" was really Daniel Defoe writing under a pen name, but this has yet to be proven. If true, the pseudonym was likely chosen to reflect the playwright Charles Johnson, who had a sensational hit play with The Successful Pyrate in 1712, which glamorized the career of Henry Avery and had been something of a scandal for seeming to praise a criminal. Following it, however, many authors would rush forward with biographies and catalogs of criminals, including catalogs of highwaymen and prostitutes. By this theory, the pseudonymous "Charles Johnson" of the pirate catalog was merely taking part in a burgeoning industry in criminal biography.

The original publisher, Charles Rivington, emphasized the fact that the catalogue (largely assembled from Admiralty Court records and a few interviews) included stories of "the remarkable ACTIONS and ADVENTURES of the two Female Pyrates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny" (op. cit. Druett 105). A second edition, vastly enlarged and most likely assembled from writings by other authors than the original, came out within a few months. A German and Dutch translation were published in 1725 (Druett 105). These German and Dutch language versions greatly played up the salaciousness of the accounts of "Amazon" pirates.