The Wrong Box (novel)

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The Wrong Box
Author Robert Louis Stevenson
Lloyd Osbourne
Country Scotland
Language English
Genre(s) Black comedy
Publisher Longmans,Green & Co.
Publication date 1889
Media type Print (Hardback)
Pages 283
ISBN NA

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 the last two remaining survivors of a tontine, who also happen to be brothers.

The book is notable for being the first of three novels that Stevenson co-wrote with Osbourne, who was his stepson. The second was The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb-Tide (1894) was the third. 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.

Contents

[edit] Characters

  • Joseph Finsbury
  • Morris Finsbury
  • John Finsbury
  • Julia Hazeltine
  • Michael Finsbury
  • Gideon Forsyth
  • William Dent Pitman
  • Edward Hugh Bloomfield

[edit] Film adaptation

[edit] Literary significance and reception

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 when I read it. That man has only one lung but he makes you laugh with all your whole inside.

[edit] External links

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