The Wrong Box

The Wrong Box is one of Stevenson's strangest works. Written with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne, it is a masterpiece of black comedy, turning on mistaken identity, the disappearance of a corpse, and several makeshift coffins. The Finsbury family has long been involved in a Tontine - a scheme in which subscribers invest money in a fund which then falls to the last survivor. Now there are only two aged uncles between Morris and John Finsbury and their fortune. A railway accident appears to dispose of one; and then the farce begins...In this eccentric and brilliantly plotted story the authors not only extended the boundaries of good taste but also satirized the popular Railway Novel genre. The Wrong Box perplexed some of its Victorian readers; a century on it is less shocking but the comedy is deft as ever. This book is intended for general readership; possible some students of late 19th-century fiction.