THE EBB-TIDE. A Trio and Quartette by Stevenson, Robert Louis & Osbourne, Lloyd - 1894

1894. London: William Heinemann, 1894. 20 pp ads dated August 1894. Original (smooth) bronze cloth pictorially decorated in black.

First English Edition (published two months after the Chicago one) of this novel Stevenson co-wrote with his stepson. A down-on-his-luck sea captain accepts an assignment on a rickety boat with a mysterious cargo and a questionable crew. As disaster befalls disaster, the crew finds itself on an uncharted island with a mad ex-sea captain who lives with a mute woman who threatens to kill them all. [Sacksteder, reviewing the 1998 film of this tale] This copy is bound in smooth bronze cloth, and has the rear cover device measuring 3/4-inch in diameter (some measure 11/16-inch). According to Carter, this smooth bronze cloth, with August 1894 ad catalogue, is one of the two primary binding states (the other being a pebbled bronze cloth); there is also a presumably-later smooth light brown cloth. This is a just-about-fine copy (the slightest of rubbing at some edges, a ghost of something once laid inside the front cover) of this attractively-bound book. Beinecke 602-605 (none of these four is quite the same as this copy); Princeton 56A, copy 1; Carter BV p. 155. Housed in a morocco-backed slipcase with inner chemise.