Robert Louis Stevenson
Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, 1879
London: C. Kegan Paul & Co.
First edition, first printing. With an ALs from the dedicatee, Sidney Colvin.
3521
Octavo. xii, 227pp. Stevenson's third book debuted with a run of only 750 copies, of which this is one. A frontispiece by Walter Crane, who contributed the same for Stevenson's...
Octavo. xii, 227pp. Stevenson's third book debuted with a run of only 750 copies, of which this is one. A frontispiece by Walter Crane, who contributed the same for Stevenson's An Inland Voyage, shows the tramping Stevenson resting in the French countryside with his quadruped companion, Modestine the donkey. Laid in is an autographed letter from Sidney Colvin, to whom Stevenson dedicated the book, and with good reason: Colvin had organized the publication of Stevenson's first books. He would later be the chief recipient of Stevenson's Vailima Letters and act as his literary advisor and sometime editor. His letter here (addressed to "Mon cher Burty") suits the role, with Colvin stumping for Stevenson as a young literary talent with Travels with a Donkey and Inland Voyage as worthy francophilic evidence. Bound in green cloth over boards with spine titling and cover landscape motif in gilt, with additional decoration in black. Modest rubs to corners and joints, very few motes of foxing, mild crack along rearmost hinge, else a very good, appealing copy, well-marketed from the start. Housed in chemise and slipcase. (Beinecke 36)


