J O N K E R S R A R E B O O K S
P R E S E N T A T I O N C O P I E S & M A N U S C R I P T S
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON TO HIS MOTHER 70. STEVENSON, Robert Louis PRINCE OTTO A Romance Chatto & Windus, 1885. First edition. Original blue-green cloth with red floral motif and gilt titles to spine. Author’s presentation copy to his mother, inscribed, “The author to his mother, Sker- ryvore, Bournemouth.” A very good copy indeed, minor wear to the extremities and fragile hinges. Housed in a custom made quarter morocco box. [17113] £15,000 A fine association copy. The only child of Thomas and Margaret Stevenson, Robert Louis was very sickly as a child and was doted upon by his mother. As he grew up he sustained a strained relationship with his authoritarian and distant father resulting in several fallings out. All this con- tributed to the unusually close relationship between Stevenson and his mother, who was deeply proud of her son’s achievements. Stevenson’s presentation copies to her are a testament to the most personal and fundamental of influences. Prince Otto was Stevenson’s second published novel, an ‘action romance’ set in the imaginary Germanic state of Grünewald, and was largely written between April and December 1883. Ste- venson notes, “[it] was written at Hyères; it took me about five months” and he called it, “my hardest effort”. One of the chapters was rewritten eight times by Stevenson and once by his wife. Nonetheless, on its publication in 1885, it received some very positive reviews. Andrew Lang in the Pall Mall Gazette wrote somewhat floridly that: “it is a book to be drunk in one long breath, like a draught of sunny Moselle from a tapering, iridescent Venetian goblet”. Significant presentation copies of Stevenson’s novels are seldom seen in commerce.
VERNE TO JAMES YOUNG 71. VERNE, Jules THE ARCHIPELAGO ON FIRE Samson Low, 1886.
First English edition. Original pictorial cloth with gilt titles to spine and upper cover. All edges gilt. Author’s presentation copy, inscribed on the half title “A monsieur James Young / hommage de l’auteur / Jules Verne / Amian, Juin 1902” A very good copy that has tender hinges and a split to the front joint. [19539] £15,000 Verne presentations are particularly rare in the English editions
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