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This is the First English Edition in book form; serialized in Scribner's Magazie Aug. 1891-July 1892. Hard cover, 8vo, in blue cloth, the boards plain with title blocked to the spine in a hand drawn typeface, the two author's names and publisher at foot of spine. Plain cream endpapers, with black and white tissue guarded frontispiece illustration: "That kind of an accident,"said he". 15 illustrations. No copyritght statement (instead, a publisher's round logo entitled "La Belle Savage.") vi, [vii] (blank), [1]- 427pp. plus 12pp. Cassel & Company publishers advertising section, headlined "A Story of Pirates and the Spanish Main," ad for RSL's Treasure Island. CONDITION: Very Good Minus. Boards a bit rubbed, both hinges have started and spine is a bit cocked. **Edinburgh novelist, essayist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) wrote this novel in collaboration with his step-son, Lloyd Osbourne, during 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. Later translated into many languages. REF: Col. W.F. Prideaux, No. 34. p. 80. Watson 1007.
Ref: RLS 9404
$39.00