STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS

1 page (5 7/8 x 3 7/8 in.; 151 x 100 mm), Skerryvore, Bournemouth, [August 1885]; horizontal fold. Matted, glazed, and framed with a portrait of Stevenson, and framed on the verso, a newspaper clipping of a poem by Guiney.

Condition as described in catalogue entry.
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Stevenson to his admirer and subsequent biographer, Louise Imogen Guiney. "I have waited long upon the muse, for I thought your song should be answered in kind. But I must wait no longer, and the verses refuse to come. Let me, then, thank you in prose for your book which I have read with pleasure, and for your poem which gave me genuine pride. It is a strange thing to hear one's name from across all these waters so beautifully set to song."

Louise Imogen Guiney (1861–1920) was an Irish-American poet and a cataloguer at the Boston Public Library.  In 1895, she and Alice Brown published a biography of Stevenson.  In 1885, Guiney published a book of poetry titled The White Sail and Other Poems, which included a poem, "The Indian Pipes," dedicated to Stevenson.