Island Nights' Entertainments.

London: Cassell & Company Limited,, 1893. First UK edition, first impression with the price facing the half-title altered in ink. Originally published in the US five days earlier, Island Nights' Entertainments is a collection of three short stories among Stevenson's last completed works before his death in 1894. The first, The Beach of Falesá, is regarded as one of Stevenson's finest stories and it was first published with the title Uma in The Illustrated London News on 2 July 1892. The author begun composing it at Vailima, Samoa: "It just shot through me like a bullet in one of my moments of awe, alone in that tragic jungle … It was very strange, very extravagant, I daresay; but it's varied, and picturesque, and has a pretty love affair, and ends well" (Vailima Letters, 1895, pp. 16-17, quoted in Prideaux). The Bottle Imp, a German folk story with a Hawaiian setting, originally appeared in Black and White in March 1891 and The Isle of Voices, a Polynesian fable, in The National Observer in February 1893. Octavo. Original blue morocco-grain cloth, titles to spine and front board in gilt, large pictorial block of "Uma" from The Beach of Falesa to front board gilt, fore and bottom edges untrimmed, floral endpapers. Monochrome frontispiece with tissue-guard, 26 similar plates, colour map. With the 16 pages of publisher's advertisements at rear (dated "7 G-3.93" as usual). Gift inscription dated 1901 to initial binder's blank. Gentle lean to slightly sunned spine, extremities rubbed with occasional spots of wear, small bump to one corner, trivial marks to cloth, foxing to endpapers and a couple of final leaves, faint offsetting to title page and frontispiece, otherwise generally clean. A very good, bright copy. Prideaux 38.