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Literature and Music
Lot 167

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON FAMILY COOKBOOK, EXTENSIVELY ANNOTATED WITH RECIPES.
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS. 1850-1894; and FANNY VAN DE GRIFT OSBOURNE STEVENSON. 1840-1914.
Buckeye Cookery. Minneapolis: Buckeye Publishing Co., 1885.

21 November 2023, 10:00 EST
New York

Sold for US$2,816 inc. premium

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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON FAMILY COOKBOOK, EXTENSIVELY ANNOTATED WITH RECIPES.

STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS. 1850-1894; and FANNY VAN DE GRIFT OSBOURNE STEVENSON. 1840-1914. Buckeye Cookery. Minneapolis: Buckeye Publishing Co., 1885.
8vo. Numerous tipped-in pages of lined notepaper with recipes, some in manuscript some typed and pasted in, and some loosely inserted. Later brown cloth, spine titled in gilt, "My Mother's Cook Book." Wear and staining.
Provenance: Fanny Stevenson, from her mother, Esther Van De Grift, thence to Isobel Osbourne Fields [1838-1953, daughter of Fanny] (penciled inscription on dedication page, dated Carpinteria, CA, 1926).
WITH: STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS; and LLOYD OSBOURNE. The Wrong Box. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1889. Publisher's yellow cloth. Heavily soiled, bumped at corners. First American edition of this work, co-written with Fanny's son from her first marriage, Lloyd Osbourne.
WITH: Souvenir oak fragment, approximately 60 x 140 mm, ostensibly from the sailing ship Equator, carved in block letters: RLS — "EQUATOR" on one side. Stevenson sailed to Micronesia on Equator in 1889, along with Lloyd Osbourne.
Provenance: Property from the Collection of David W. Forbes.

David Forbes is the author of the Hawaiian National Bibliography and the editor of the diaries of Queen Lili'uokalani, as well as a noted Stevenson collector. Among his manuscripts at the time of his death was a work in progress on the letters of Isobel Strong, RLS's stepdaughter, based on the collection at the Huntington Library. This cookbook, which contains family recipes attributed directly to "Mrs. R.L.S.," is inscribed with notations from members of Fanny's family, notably one from Fanny's daughter, Isobel, another later inscription (partially erased) with a similar attribution to Fanny's mother, Esther, and a presentation inscription to Lucy Orr Vahrenkamp (1886-1981), a niece of Fanny through her sister, Cora Van Der Grift.

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