Oh my gosh, yes. And the depiction of him on the show is not, as far as I know, all that exaggerated (he absolutely did have a library on his ship). Nor is the theory that he remained unmurdered by Blackbeard for a whole year and a half because they were fucking a wildly unlikely theory.

(For that matter, the theory that Blackbeard actually killed very few people and relied on his reputation and theatrical effects has quite a lot of historical evidence going for it.)