THE MERRY MEN: And Other Tales and Fables

London: Chatto & Windus, 1887. First printing. Very good.. First edition of this collection of six of Stevenson's best tales, including the uncanny classics "Olalla" and "Thrawn Janet." In his essay "A Chapter on Dreams," Stevenson explains that the ambiguously vampiric "Olalla" was an attempt to work out an essential situation glimpsed in his dreams: A collaboration between the author's conscious mind and "the little people who manage man's internal theatre," who "do one-half my work for me while I am fast asleep." Another horror classic, "Thrawn Janet," is the story of a possessed "witch-wife" cleansed of the devil by a pious minister marked for life by the battle and one of just two stories that Stevenson wrote in Scots. The title story confronts "the horror - the horror o' the sea"; "Will O' the Mill" a long and profitless life of self-denial lightened at last by Death; and "Markheim" another encounter with the devil, but one which allows its murdering hero to choose atonement and confession over the array of further sins laid out to tempt him. A wonderfully gothic collection. 7'' x 4.75''. Original pictorial blue cloth stamped in black and silver. Decorative botanical endpapers. 296 pages, followed by 32-page publisher's catalogue (dated September 1886). Slight spine lean, light edgewear and rubbing to boards, corners bumped.