Sea shanty until that decade. A well-known early example, though not strictly speaking a reference to a shanty, is the song "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest", which was invented by Robert Louis Stevenson for his novel "Treasure Island" (1883). Quotes of "Blow the Man Down" were particularly plentiful. Rudyard Kipling romanticized the idea of the sailor's sea song within the poetic genre with his works "The First Chantey" and "The Last Chantey" (1893). While shanties were historically understood as work songs, the word "shanty" has often been used in popular culture since the mid-20th century as a catch-all term that
John Stevenson (writer) surprised Maurice Girodias (the founder of Olympia Press), who described it as "almost too brutal". The book was published under the pseudonym Marcus van Heller, a pen name which Stevenson continued to use for the subsequent novels, making it one of the most famous brand names published at Olympia Press. The success of the first novel was followed by other books, written in the years 1955–1961, making Stevenson the most prolific writer for the "Traveller's Companion" series of this publisher. The second novel, "The Loins of Amun" (1955), was set in Ancient Egypt, marking the beginning of a specialisation in