The Wrong Box (novel)

The Wrong Box

First edition cover
Author	Robert Louis Stevenson Lloyd Osbourne
Country	Scotland
Language	English
Genre	Black comedy
Publisher	Longmans,Green & Co.
Publication date	1889
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	283
Text	The Wrong Box at Wikisource

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 two brothers who are the last two surviving members of a tontine.

The book was the first of three novels that Stevenson co-wrote with Osbourne, who was his stepson. The others were The Wrecker (1892) and The Ebb-Tide (1894). 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.^[1] A film adaptation, also titled The Wrong Box, was released in 1966,^[2] and a musical in 2002.

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.^[3]

Adaptation[]

The Wrong Box was filmed in 1966 starring Michael Caine.^[4] The novel was also adapted as a stage musical in 2002, and a studio cast recording of the show was released in August 2013.^[5]

References[]

External links[]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Wrong Box

• The Wrong Box at Project Gutenberg
• The Wrong Box public domain audiobook at LibriVox

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