A cue - from a saga.
The Waif Woman A cue - from a saga.
1892.
The author's holograph manuscript of his short story "The Waif Woman". Fourteen foolscap pages, written in ink on rectos of fine quality lined paper, approx 3500 words. Bound by Stikeman & Co. in full black morocco, lettered in gilt to the upper board. Numerous holograph corrections and revisions. Faint creasing to the final leaf, otherwise fine.
A short story of horror and supernatural mystery, inspired by Stevenson's reading of the thirteenth century Norse-Icelandic saga, Erybyggia, which had just been translated into English in 1892. It features an old woman who arrives in Iceland with two trunks of fine clothes and fabulous jewels. Staying in the house of a younger woman, the old woman dies with the final request to the younger woman to destroy her belongings. The young woman, obsessed by these treasures, ignores the dying request of the old woman and keeps everything, bringing death and destruction on her family as the old woman returns from the dead seeking justice.
Stevenson had intended to publish "The Waif Woman" in Island Nights' Entertainment (1893), but it was excluded owing to his wife's objections, who found the story repulsive, and his agent's who thought it not in keeping with the remainder of the stories for the book, which were South Sea tales. "The Waif Woman" was only published when this manuscript was discovered amongst Stevenson's papers following the death of his wife. It first appeared in the December 1914 number of Scribner's Magazine and was issued in stand alone book form by Chatto & Windus in 1916.
Full manuscripts of Stevenson's fiction are of exceptional rarity in commerce: besides this manuscript (which was offered at Christies in 1994) the last manuscript story to appear at auction was the unpublished four page story, "Tolopa, Tagarewa" in 1956.
Stock ID: 45470
£65,000.00
