Treasure Island by STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS - 1884

Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1884. Continental Edition. Bound without wrappers in modern quarter-morocco and marbled boards; very good. Presentation copy; inscribed by the author at the top of the title page, “I hope it will please you. Robert Louis Stevenson.” Signed on the title page by the recipient, Herbert Beerbohm Tree; inked exclamation points around the imprint, in whose hand is unclear. Tree starred in and produced Stevenson and Henley’s play Beau Austin at the Haymarket Theatre (where Tree was actor-manager) on November 3, 1890. It was not a success. The play itself was issued in a private edition in 1884. A short note from Tree to Edwin Booth has been bound in; on the final page of text, apparently in Tree’s hand, “Oxen and wain-ropes,” has been underlined, and noting “Twelfth-Night” [from which Stevenson was quoting]. Laid in is a typed description from an unknown English bookseller, likely from the first part of the twentieth-century. While inscribed Stevenson books are very uncommon, we have neither seen nor had another inscribed copy of this title, his most famous and beloved work. Through most of the 19th century and well into the twentieth, Tauchnitz issued copyright editions of English and American works to be sold on the continent for travelers and resident English-speakers.