Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. London: Cassell & Company, Limited, 1883, 8vo.
ONE OF THE GREATEST OBTAINABLE COPIES OF THE FIRST EDITION OF TREASURE ISLAND IN THE ORIGINAL CLOTH BINDING.
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A beautiful copy, extremely rare in excellent original condition, one of only 2000 copies originally printed between 14th November and 11th December 1883 of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic pirate story, being one of the greatest and most popular adventure novels in the English language. It was released with four different bindings/ad catalogues and it would seem that the red binding is the scarcest, especially in such bright and clean condition. A broadly similar copy in terms of the condition, binding, date of advertisements, etc, recently sold at Christie's Exceptional Literature sale on the 14th of September 2021 which realised $18,750 USD. Christie's suggest that, though there is dispute concerning the priority of the advertisements, those dated October, as with our copy, were probably the earliest copies to be released.
With all requisite first issue points present, including "deadman's chest" not capitalised on pp.2, and pp.7; "rain" for "vain" on pp.40, last line; no "a" on pp.63, line 6; no full stop after "opportunity" on pp.178, line 20; "worse" for "worst" on page 197, line 3
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Size: 131 x 197 mm (approx.)
Condition:
[(1), h.t., frontis, t.p., dedication leaf, contents leaf, pp.1-292, 8pp. (advertisements), (1)]
Collates as complete including the four-colour frontispiece, half title, dedication, and 8pp of publisher's advertisements, here dated 5R-1083 (October 1883). Original publisher's red cloth binding, retaining the original binder's ticket to the foot of the front pastedown. Binding is very bright and clean, some minor bumps to corners and extremities of the backstrip as typical. Gilt lettering to backstrip bright and easily legible. Slightly cocked. Both boards securely attached, hinges cracked. No attached bookplates, contemporary ownership inscription of (presumably) the original owner to verso of front free endpaper dated 1884. Some foxing to preliminaries and some minor staining affecting up to ~pp.8 in the outer and inner blank space, not touching text, else with some very minor scattered spotting throughout, but generally very bright and clean throughout the entire text block, free from marginalia. Gathering N slightly loose.
One of the greatest obtainable copies in the very scarce original publisher's cloth binding of probably the greatest adventure novel of the 19th century.
[Beinecke 240].
