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First British Edition, published September, 1894 and dated by the publisher's catalogue of August, 1894-- no copyright noted. Hard cover, 8vo., in gold silk-like cloth covered boards, the front blocked in black with pictorial image of a sailing ship consumed by towering, Hokusai-like waves, with a sunrise and island in the background, the titles in black to the spine, and with the William Heinemann logo within a circle to the bottom right of rear board. Top and fore-edges untrimmed with bottom edge of text block trimmed. A list of "New Six Shilling Novels opposite title page. With running headers to chapters, half titles to the two sections (the second part of the story starts with "The Pearl-Fisher.)**COLLATION: [8], 1-237, plus 20pp. Publisher's Catalogue: "A List of Mr. William Heinemann's Publications," dated August, 1894.**CONDITION: Very Good. Some exterior soiling and minor fraying at foot and head of spine as seen in photos. Front hinge only with a very minor one inch split. Rear hinge in order. Pages moderately age toned, with a few spots of soiling in places, but generally clean. One midway crack in binding. Pages have been "opened" in the past, with a couple of rough edges, as expected. Now in mylar. ** An allegorical, modern South Seas novel written by famed Edinburgh-born adventure novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) in collaboration with his step-son [Samuel] Lloyd Osbourne and published in the last year of the primary author's life. The story concerns the travels of a disreputable trio of morally bankrupt British seamen, stranded on Tahiti by various ignominious folly. Herrick, a vastly educated Londoner, Captain Davis, of coastal Maine, and their companion Huish, a common thief and not really a sailor at all, find themselves starving, ill from influenza and sleeping rough on the beach. They must shelter in an abandoned colonial prison, hiding from real imprisonment by the French authorities. Capt. Brown hatches a plan to better their position when a British schooner, the Farallone, is abandoned in the bay-- three British crew members having succumbed to smallpox, leaving a native crew and a cargo of California champagne yet to be delivered to Sydney, Australia. Brown's short-sighted plan to steal the cargo and the ship, however, comes a cropper when they discover the original crew had already swindled the shipping company. The second part of the story unwinds the results of a new and dangerous plan of theft, murder and treachery. An interesting comparison to Conrad's Nostromo. REF: Col. W.F. Prideaux, A Bibliography of the Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (1918), 40.
Ref: RLS 9261
$125.00