Researching Pirates

Posted on April 9, 2009 by Victoria Janssen


The novel I’m currently writing has pirates! I am very excited by this, as pirates are a classic element in romance novels.

Here’s what I’ve been reading so far, as research. Links are to Amazon.com.

I started out with this one, a long time ago: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pirates.

This collection of essays takes a much more academic approach. Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader.

I can’t recommend this book enough, if you’re interested in historical pirates in Asia: Pirate of the Far East: 811-1639.

This is perhaps the most valuable book I’ve found so far, overall: Pirates!: Brigands, Buccaneers, and Privateers in Fact, Fiction, and Legend.

This seemed to be the most detailed of the books on women and piracy: Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors’ Wives.

This will probably be my next purchase: Pirates, Prostitutes and Pullers: Explorations in the Ethno- and Social History of Southeast Asia.

I don’t have this one yet, but it is completely tempting even though it’s not relevant to my book: Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom–and Revenge.

Please let me know if you have any recommendations!

About Victoria Janssen

Victoria Janssen [she, her] currently writes cozy space opera for Kalikoi. The novella series A Place of Refuge begins with Finding Refuge: Telepathic warrior Talia Avi, genius engineer Miki Boudreaux, and augmented soldier Faigin Balfour fought the fascist Federated Colonies for ten years, following the charismatic dissenter Jon Churchill. Then Jon disappeared, Talia was thought dead, and Miki and Faigin struggled to take Jon’s place and stay alive. When the FC is unexpectedly upended, Talia is reunited with her friends and they are given sanctuary on the enigmatic planet Refuge. The trio of former guerillas strive to recover from lifetimes of trauma, build new lives on a planet with endless horizons, and forge tender new connections with each other.
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4 Responses to Researching Pirates

  1. Jenna Reynolds says:
    April 9, 2009 at 4:39 pm

    Thanks for these! I have a cameo appearance of a pirate in short story I'm currently working on and a couple years back I finished the draft of a pirate novella that I hope to get back to so these are great resources.

    Have you taken a look at Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates? Another book I came across was The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers & Rogues.

  2. Victoria Janssen says:
    April 9, 2009 at 4:47 pm

    Ooh, thanks!

    More for the wishlist!

  3. Jenna Reynolds says:
    April 9, 2009 at 7:29 pm

    You’re welcome. :) I’ve been wanting to buy The Pirate Primer ever since it first came out. As much for the pirate terminology as for the fact I love collecting books about words and slang.

  4. Theodosia says:
    April 10, 2009 at 11:28 am

    What can I say, but Arrrrr!

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