[Blue variant] Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson

Kidnapped. By Robert Louis Stevenson. London: Cassell & Company, 1886. First Edition, First Issue. Blue cloth variant of first edition. Gently rubbed at head, tail, and corners. Spine a touch darker than boards, slightly cocked. Previously sophisticated with replaced endpapers. Nominal foxing surrounding fold-out map. Ex libris bookplate Rex Maughan. Very Good Plus. The following first issue points are present and confirmed.

Bound in publisher’s variant blue cloth. (Beinecke/McKay 380. Wainwright 31.4) Half-title, verso list of twelve titles by the same author, with tipped in (as issued) folded map of a Sketch of the Cruise of the Brig Covenant and the Probable Course of David Balfour’s Wanderings. (Beinecke/McKay 379.)

Bottom of page 311 bears the publisher’s imprint, with verso publisher’s advertisement of the Illustrated Edition of Treasure Island, followed by eight leaves (16 pages) of publisher’s advertisements with date codes 5G.4.86 and 5B.4.86 on the first and fifth leaf respectively. (Beinecke/McKay 379. Prideaux 18; Wainwright 31.)

In a letter written by Stevenson to Charles Scribner on July 16, 1886, (in the Beinecke Collection) he asked that the word “business” at page 40, line 11, (in the sentence: I asked him soberly to name his business) on the third page of Chapter 5, be changed to “pleasure”; that “nine o’clock” at page 64, line 1,  be changed to “twelve o’clock” in the first line of Chapter 8; and that “Long Islands” at page 101, lines 9-10, be changed to “Long Island” in the second paragraph of Chapter 12. None of these changes were made in the first issue. (Beinecke/McKay 379.)