When The Devil Was Well, A Hitherto Unpublished Story, by Robert Louis Stevenson
"In light of present knowledge, the story here printed for the first time is the earliest extant piece of prose fiction written by Robert Louis Stevenson."
The tale named has, according to Sir Sidney Colvin, "perished like so many other stories of this time." Stevenson's rapture over it prepares us for the following sentences in a letter of January 1875 to Mrs. Sitwell, later Lady Colvin: "I am so happy. I am no longer here in Edinburgh. I have been all yesterday evening and this evening in Italy, four hundred years ago, with one Sannazaro, sculptor, painter, poet, etc., and one Ippolita, a beautiful Dutchess. Oh, I like it badly! I wish you could hear it at once, or rather, oh, wish you could see it immediately in beautiful type on such a page as it ought to be in my first little volume of stories. What a change this is from collecting dull notes for John Knox, as I have been all the early part of the week - the difference between life and death. . . vous verez, and if you don't like this story - well, I give it up if you don't like it. Not but what there's a long way to travel yet; I am no farther than the threshold; I have only set the men, and the game has still to be played, and a lot of dim notions must become definite and shapely, and s deal be clear to me that is anything but clear as yet. the story shall be called, I think, 'When the Devil was Wel, in allusion to the old proverb."

Cream vellum spine and tips over green cloth with only a touch of the green from the box on the spine. Matching green double slipcase with paper spine label. One of 450 copies. An excellent copy. Bibliophile Society, Boston, 1921. Hardcover. Limited Edition.
Measures: 9.25 x 7.25 x 1

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