Softback. Red leather binding with gilt title and decoration on the spine.

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St. Ives: Being The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England (1897) is an unfinished novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was completed in 1898 by Arthur Quiller-Couch. The book plot concerns the adventures of the dashing Viscomte Anne de Keroual de St. Ives, a Napoleonic soldier, enlisted as a private under the name Champdivers, after his capture by the British. 

The 1949 film The Secret of St. Ives and the 1998 film St. Ives, also known as All For Love, were based on the novel. A television mini-series based on the novel was broadcast on the BBC in 1955. For the movie the character may have been changed to a Captain, and his first name changed to Jacque, as there seems to be confusion on these points. 

Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for the novels Treasure Island (1883), Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), and Kidnapped (1886) and for the poetry collection A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885).

Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life but managed to write prolifically and travel widely despite his poor health. As a young man, he mixed in London literary circles, receiving encouragement from Sidney Colvin, Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen and W. E. Henley, the last of whom may have provided the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. In 1890 he settled in Samoa, where, alarmed at increasing European and American influence in the South Sea islands, his writing turned from romance and adventure fiction toward a darker realism. He died of a stroke in his island home in 1894 at age 44.

A celebrity in his lifetime, Stevenson’s critical reputation has fluctuated since his death, although today his works are held in general acclaim. In 2018 he was ranked just behind Charles Dickens as the 26th-most-translated author in the world.