Estimate: $1,000 - $1,500
The Collection of Victor Niederhoffer part II
Auction: September 19, 2019 11:00:00 AM EDT
(London): Cassell & Company, 1886. First edition, first issue with "business" to p. 40 and 15pp. publisher's ads dated "4.86". 8vo. Illustrated with folding color frontispiece map. Publisher's original red cloth, lettered in gilt to spine, top edge stained olive, other edges untrimmed; slightly cocked and with light stress to hinges and casing, darkening to spine, some dust smudging to covers, a few heavily scuffed areas on back cover, interior generally clean. With the book-plate of Edmund William Gosse on the front paste-down. With a tipped in letter from Stevenson's wife to fellow author Edmund Gosse: [Samoa], [ca. 1898]. 3pp. 12mo. Autograph letter signed by Fanny van de G(rift) Stevenson to Edmund Gosse. Tipped in between front free endpaper and half-title, with front panel of the hand addressed postal envelope, post marked Samoa and San Francisco, hinge mounted to half-title. "Several years ago, impelled by curiosity, I took a plunge into that great undercurrent of literature (if it can be so called) in which you seem, also, to have dipped...I cannot bear the new books, with the exception of Barrie, Sarah Ground, the slo-do person and all the rest of them including 'Tess' fill me with amazement and disgust...l suppose you know that we are in the midst of another war. Our friends at home [in the States] take such bitter exception to our 'blacks' or 'darkies' as they call them, that I fear to say a word about our life here [Samoa] which is so entirely mixed up with the native element that I cannot disentangle it. We foreigners here do not use the words 'black', 'darkie', or 'nigger' when speak of the Samoans..." Fanny van de Grief Stevenson (1840-1914) was an American journalist, author, traveler, and the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson. Edmund William Gosse (1849-1928) was a British author and poet, noted for his pioneering psychological autobiography titled Father and Son. He was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson and a wide field of literary and other culturally prominent persons, including gay figures. Prideaux 18 .