STEVENSON (Robert Louis).
Island Nights Entertainments Consisting of the Beach of Falesa the Bottle Imp the Isle of Voices.
“For the last four years of his life Stevenson made his home on his plantation of Vailima, beautifully situated 600 feet above sea-level, on the mountainside among thick woods, with fine views of the Pacific.” Here, he continued to write copiously, including the stories in this little volume. ‘The Beach of Falesá’, [is] regarded as one of his finest short stories. He described it as ‘the first realistic South Sea story; I mean with real South Sea character and details of life’ (ibid., 7.161). It was collected […] with two other tales, ‘The Bottle Imp’, a German folk story given a Hawaiian setting (which was published in translation in a Samoan missionary magazine), and ‘The Isle of Voices’, a Polynesian fable. The first full, unbowdlerized version of ‘Falesá’ did not appear until 1984.” (ODNB).
A good copy, head and tail caps rubbed and frayed, joints and corners rubbed.
