Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates is subtitled Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of the Spanish Main but how accurate were the costume depictions in Pyle's great works? 

The artist's articles appeared in Harper’s Monthly Magazine during the early 1900s. These were later collected together in Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates: Fiction, Fact & Fancy. However, the difference between the fiction and fact of how these gentlemen looked is something that may not have concerned Pyle greatly. There is wide discrepancy between archive costume and historical account, even before Pyle, as depicted in the crude woodcut pictures of the time, of course. In his turn, Pyle dismissed these to concentrate on ‘imaginative’ renderings, exaggerating details of worn-out 18th century clothing, just as Sergio Leone and others have exaggerated particular features of 19th century garb for their Western films. Film costume designers in their turn have relied on Pyle’s idealisations as the source for 'realistic' depictions of pirate characters.

Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates -- Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of the Spanish Main From the Writings and Pictures of Howard Pyle: compiled by Merle Johnson, Harper & Brothers, 1921.