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Stevenson, Robert Louis; Peake, Mervyn (illus.).
Treasure Island.
Publisher: Eyre & Spottiswoode, London;
Date of Publication: 1949
Stock Code: 15663
The first edition with these illustrations, after the first of 1883. Octavo, pp., vii, [3], 244, [2], illustrated throughout after drawings by Peake, plus full-colour map. Publisher’s bright blue buckram; titled in silver to black spine label; top edge dyed blue; white end-papers; in the publisher’s original unclipped scarlet dust-jacket, illustrated to upper panel with Peake’s portrait of Long John Silver. A few minor nicks to edges of jacket; scattered spotting to lower panel. Binding strong and square, the cloth and silver bright. Internally clean and free of annotations or inscriptions. A near-fine copy in very good or better jacket. Treasure Island was Peake’s favourite book as a boy (see Maslen), and the roguish, salt-bitten figure of the pirate was a figure that the artist and poet would return to throughout his career. Peake’s illustrations to Treasure Island are therefore unsurprisingly some of the finest ever commissioned to accompany the novel. The pen-and-ink drawings that Peake supplies are dark, and often off-kilter, rendered through cross-hatching which afford texture and weight to the shady rogues depicted. £125.00