 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Hard cover, 8vo in tan buckram, the top board with an art deco design of the two correspondent's initials, a tropical island and image of a neoclassical building which appears to be the Royal Scottish Academy, (Princes St.,near Waverly Sta.) Titles to the spine in gold. Top edge gilt. Engraved Strang portrait of RLS tissue-guarded frontis, title page in red and black, 1895 to title page, no copyright statement. Printers Edinburgh, T. & A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty. COLLATION:["Works by the Late Robert Louis Stevenson"at [i]-[vii],viii- xx, [1]-366, [1]. This printing has no advertising catalogue.**CONDITION: Very Good Plus. Minor rubbing at joints, and head and foot of spine. A few scuffs, as seen in photos. Some stain to rear board. Front hinge with 3/4 inch crack; rear hinge in order. Some foxing to endpapers.Otherwise the interior text is clean and lightly age-toned. **The text, with side note dating the correspondence, consists of letters from the Scottish Author Robert Louis Stevenson to his good friend and literary agent at the time, Sir Sidney Colvin, and was published a year after the death of Stevenson. RLS had moved to the estate of Vailima in Samoa in 1887 as a last-ditch attempt to manage his tubercular symptoms, and he relied on Colvin to arrange publication of his works in back in Britain. Both the editor's Editorial Note and Epilogue detail the scope of their literary friendship. The letters are a delightful mix of informal detail about living in Samoa, and part writer's diary. Sir Sidney Colvin had a distinguished career as art historian and critic, and was a contemporary of Johns Ruskin; they both held the Slade Chair of Art simultaneously at Cambridge and Oxford Universities. In addition, Colvin was a respected Keats scholar and published another two-volume book of his own correspondence. For the scholar of Robert Louis Stevenson, this work provides the novelist's thoughts in his own words on works produced during this period, among them, "The Wrecker" and "David Balfour (Catriona)". It also recounts his opinions on a variety of matters relating to living in the Pacific, such as his alliance with local Samoan chiefs against colonial interests.
Ref: RLS 9285
$125.00