"The Beach of Falesa ", by Robert Louis Stevenson. New York The Heritage Press 1956 Hard Cover. Very Good. No Jacket 4to-over 9 3/4 "-12" tall. 130 pages. Sandglass pamphlet included. Excellent condition except for previous owner's tasteful signature on fly page. In a good brown slipcase. Decorated cloth covered boards-attractive. Tips in very good condition. Very nice & clean inside & out.Like new. Several duo-tone illustrations by Millar Sheets. Intro by J.C. Furnas. This text represents the story exactly as R.L.S. wrote it.
Quote from the introduction: " In the year 1890 the jungle on the northern slopes of Upolu - principal of the Samoan group of the South Islands - was under attack by a slender, not to say skinny, Scot afflicted with tuberculosis and committed to able writing. He was cutting paths with a heavy knife of the machete school through prehensile vines and sappy undergrowth and all the morbid secondary botany of tropical forest. He knew that he was clumsy about it and that he work was in any case evanescent, that within months, almost within weeks, the vegetation that he was mangling would grow back in the same obscene luxuriance. But Robert Louis Stevenson was inquisitive about the three-hundred-odd acres that he had bought to live on and die on, in an island that apparently was good for what ailed him. And this laborious exploration was the only way to become acquanited with his new estate. Presently, as exploration proceeded, the mas of vegetation came to appall him to fertile purpose. He came out of his intimacy with the bush stringing a set of strange verses, THE WOODMAN:
" Thick round me in the teeming mud
Briar and fern strove to the blood:
The hooked liana in his gin
Noosed his reluctant neighbors in:
There the green murderer throve and spread,
Upon his smothering victims spread..."
and planning a long short story that had "...shot through me like a bullet in one of my moments of awe, alone in that tragic jungle." It would eventually be entitled The Beach of Falesa....
Keywords: Literature The Beach Of Falesa Stevenson, Robert Louis LITERATURE ILLUSTRATED SLIPCASE SAMOAN SOUhT SEA ISLANDS KANAKA POLYNESIA POLYNESIAN ADVENTURE
