“ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANT ADVENTURE STORIES OF ALL TIMES”: STEVENSON’S KIDNAPPED ILLUSTRATED BY N.C. WYETH

WYETH, N.C. Kidnapped: The Adventures of David Balfour. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926. Quarto, original black cloth, mounted cover illustration, pictorial endpapers, uncut and partially unopened, original dust jacket. $450.

Early edition with colorful illustrations by N.C. Wyeth, with bright, tipped-in illustrated title page from the 1924 edition, folding map and nine beautiful color plates.

"This book is one of the most brilliant adventure stories of all times" (Carpenter & Prichard, 292). Robert Louis Stevenson's work played a particularly significant role in the career of N.C. Wyeth. The first work published in Scribner's "Illustrated Classics" series and the first with illustrations by Wyeth was Stevenson's Treasure Island. It "marked the beginning of a long list of great books that Wyeth would be commissioned to illustrate" and proved so successful that Wyeth immediately went to work on the second in the series, Kidnapped (Allen & Allen, 84). Once again, N.C. Wyeth's compositions "not only crackled with action, they made dramatic use of isolated figures, of light and shade, of odd, arresting angles" (Silvey, 696). First Scribner's "Illustrated Classics" edition, illustrated by Wyeth, published in 1913. See Allen & Allen, 218.

Book exceptionally fine, scarce dust jacket with extensive glue residue on verso. A lovely copy.