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Robert Louis Stevenson: The wrong box (1905, C. Scribner's Sons)

331 pages

English language

Published May 14, 1905 by C. Scribner's Sons.

OCLC Number:
2499165

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The Wrong Box is a black comedy novel co-written by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, first published in 1889. The story is about two brothers who are the last two surviving members of a tontine.

The book was the first of three novels that Stevenson co-wrote with Osbourne, who was his stepson. The others were The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb-Tide (1894). Osbourne wrote the first draft of the novel late in 1887 (then called The Finsbury Tontine), Stevenson revised it in 1888 (then called A Game of Bluff) and again in 1889 when it was finally called The Wrong Box. A film adaptation, also titled The Wrong Box, was released in 1966, and a musical in 2002.

Rudyard Kipling, in a letter to his friend Edmonia Hill (dated September 17, 1889), praised the novel:

"I have got R.L. Stevenson's In the Wrong Box and laughed over it dementedly …

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