Stevensoniana

STEVENSON'S FIRST BOOK

The publication of the Stevenson letters revived interest in his career, both as man and writer. His first published book, as our readers will remember, was "The Pentland Rising," a pamphlet of twenty pages issued in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1866, when the author was but sixteen. At the time of Stevenson's death copies of this little work were sold for upwards of £20 a piece, but the price afterwards fell considerably. In 1868, he wrote the "Charity Bazaar," a boyish skit, filling four pages quarto, and which was privately printed. His next appearance in print seems to have been in the pages of a college paper, the Edinburgh University Magazine, which he and three fellow-students edited, and which lived through four numbers only. These numbers were issued from January to April, 1871. He says:

"A pair of little active brothers--Livingstone by name, great skippers on the foot, great rubbers