AN ALLEGORICAL DIALOGUE
ONE OF TWO KNOWN COPIES
The Charity Bazaar: AN ALLEGORICAL DIALOGUE
Privately Printed, 1871.
First edition, first issue (with dis-covered in the second line of the text). Single bifolium. 4pp on laid paper with the Annandale watermark. A very good copy, backed with a fine linen gauze, repairing a clean tear to the fold and a horizontal tear to the first leaf, without loss. Housed in a chemise and quarter morocco slipcase.
This "boyish skit, privately printed on the occasion of a charity bazaar held at 17 Heriot Road, Edinburgh" (Prideaux) is the rarest of all Stevenson's works in first edition, one of only two known copies, the other being held in the Beinecke collection at Yale.
George McKay's catalogue of the extensive Stevenson collection of Edwin J. Beinecke, demonstrates a number of differences between the issues, including "several minor typographical differences" and also that the first issue was printed on laid, watermarked paper and the second on wove, unmarked paper, suggesting that this is actually a distinct printing of the work. McKay also disproves Prideaux's contention that it was published in 1868, by citing that the original manuscript, now also in the Beinecke collection, is on paper watermarked 1871.
Copies of the second issue (printing) which appear in commerce (itself a relatively uncommon occurrence) are almost entirely made up of those unused copies, which Stevenson signed and distributed from Samoa, towards the end of his life.
PROVENANCE: E.E.Taylor (Bookplate to chemise); Edith Barbara Tranter (bookplate to chemise; sold at her sale in 1952 for $180. She also possessed a second issue which sold at the same sale for $30);
Prideaux 2; McKay 3
Stock ID: 45990
£12,500.00
