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Reprint of the "illustrated edition" of 1906. Hard cover, 8vo, in vertically striped green cloth with a central art deco style publisher's monogram vignette blocked to the front board, and the the titles in gold to the spine. Top edge gilt. Copyright 1891 by the authors. Tissue guarded frontispiece illustration titled "That Kind of An Accident," Said He," plus 7 additional black and white full page illustrations. Ruled box around Title page CONDITION: Near Fine, clean, not written in, lightly toned pages. COLLATION: vii, 553 pp. (plates unpaginated).** Edinburgh novelist, essayist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) wrote this novel in collaboration with his step-son, Lloyd Osbourne, first published in 1891. This was during RLS's later years when he had long departed Scotland for Samoa and where a lifelong struggle with tuberculosis was mitigated by the South Seas climate.** Most of the book is narrated by Loudon Dodd, an American from the fictional State of Muskegon, USA. Unhappy as a business school student, Dodd convinces his father to send him to Paris to pursue his real passion, sculpture. He stops on the way in Scotland to meet his Edinburgh relatives, and makes a favorable impression on his grandfather, a down to earth home builder, who generously irons out of a few financial problems for his grandson throughout the story. While in Paris, Dodd meets Pinkerton, an enterprising man with many money-making ideas. The pair ends up in San Francisco, purchasing the wreck of a cargo ship, "The Flying Scud." Mysterious circumstances surround the history of this supposed shipwreck off Midway Island. Dodd and Pinkerton originally believe the cargo to have been silks and tea; later they suspect it contained opium. The original crew and captain appear to have disappeared and a mysterious proxy drives up the auction price. With exotic settings from the Polynesian Marquesas Islands, to Honolulu, Paris, Edinburgh and beyond, this is an excellent mystery read.
Ref: RLS 9266
$45.00