Treasure Island (SIGNED)

STEVENSON, Robert Louis; STEADMAN, Ralph (illustrator).

Treasure Island.

FIRST EDITION — the first Steadman-illustrated edition. London: Harrap Limited, 1985.

Boldly signed and dated by Steadman in gold pen across the endpapers, the signature laid over his printed skull-and-crossbones endpaper design. This is the trade hardback in the publisher's dust jacket — not the separate Harrap limited edition of 250 copies in leather slipcase, but the standard first issue, signed by the artist after publication. Small quarto. 216 pp. Twenty-four full-color paintings by Steadman throughout. Black cloth with gilt lettering to the front board and spine, in the original publisher's illustrated dust jacket. Fine; in a near fine dust jacket.

Ralph Steadman's edition of Treasure Island, a striking modern reading of Stevenson's 1883 pirate novel by the Welsh artist best known for his decades-long collaboration with Hunter S. Thompson. The twenty-four full-color paintings, often spread across two pages, give Stevenson's buccaneers and buried gold the unmistakable Steadman treatment — splattered ink, distorted faces, an atmosphere of moral menace — matched by an introduction that reads the novel as a story with no heroes, every character smitten by a festering greed for gold.

SKU TO-2026-127