The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: The Pentland Edition

London: Cassell and Company, 1906-1907. Cloth. Very Good Indeed. 9" by 6". Various. A scarce set of the collected works of Robert Louis Stevenson. Complete in twenty volumes, this edition was part of a limited printing of 1550 copies, of which this is number 176. Published by Casell and Company in association with several of Stevenson's previous publishers, including Chatto and Windus, Heinemann and Longmans Green, this collection of his works varies from his most popular (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, In The South Seas, The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde etc) to more obscure, such as Notes and Essays Chiefly of The Road, Letters from Samoa and Familiar Studies of Men and Books. As such, the collection sees Stevenson's fiction and non-fiction, writing of his own opinions and experiences as much as creating these for his characters. The collection was published at a time before Stevenson's work would be disparaged in favour of Modernist Literature, which would make a departure from the escapism that prevailed in the popular work of the Nineteenth Century. This dismissal of Stevenson's work failed to take into account the author's literary and social criticism, as well as his humanist and anti-imperialist viewpoints (this latter aspect seen here particularly in The Ebb-Tide), which would perhaps have seen him viewed in more favour. The result was relatively far-reaching in that he would be deemed unworthy of mention in the definitive Norton Anthology of English Literature until 2006; a century after this collection was published. A bibliography and introduction is here provided by Edmund Gosse, a prominent literary critic of his time and a aquaintance and contemporary of the likes of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy. Gosse, among his other many achievements is largely credited in helping to popularise the work of Henrik Ibsen to English-speaking audiences. Each volume contains a bookplate to the pastedown, bearing the design of 'Newberry'. In cloth binding with gilt detailing. Externally quite smart, there are some instances of wear to the extremities, as well as sunning to the backstrip and markings to boards. Internally, the pages are firmly bound and are bright and clean throughout, aside from the usual instances of foxing to the endpapers. Very Good Indeed