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Fanny Stevenson: A Romance of Destiny
Providing a clear, accurate picture of the woman behind the genius, an incisive biography of the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson traces Fanny Stevenson's life from her early years in America to her days after his death.
556 pages, Hardcover
First published May 11, 1993
About the author
Alexandra Lapierre
33 books144 followersAlexandra Lapierre has won international acclaim for her writing. Her works have been widely translated and she has received numerous awards, including the Honorary Award of the Association of American University Women. She earned an MFA degree in 1981 from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
The daughter of the writer Dominique Lapierre, she was brought up surrounded by books. At the Sorbonne in Paris, she learned how to research. And, she said, her studies at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles and the University of Southern California taught her how to tell a story, "something we have forgotten a bit in French literature today."
She was voted Woman of Culture by the city of Rome, Italy, and has been nominated Chevalier in the “Order of Arts and Letters” by the French government. Her most recent work, L’Excessive, was an immediate best seller in Europe and is being developed for a television series. Alexandra Lapierre lives in Paris.
The daughter of the writer Dominique Lapierre, she was brought up surrounded by books. At the Sorbonne in Paris, she learned how to research. And, she said, her studies at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles and the University of Southern California taught her how to tell a story, "something we have forgotten a bit in French literature today."
She was voted Woman of Culture by the city of Rome, Italy, and has been nominated Chevalier in the “Order of Arts and Letters” by the French government. Her most recent work, L’Excessive, was an immediate best seller in Europe and is being developed for a television series. Alexandra Lapierre lives in Paris.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
March 25, 2021
I HAD NO IDEA!!! This is continually how I reacted when I read about the life of Fanny Stevenson (1840-1914), the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson, the famed novelist, poet and travel writer (1850-1894). It was with continual wonder and surprise that I read the pages of this book. Beginning in the 1860s she traveled the world in a fashion that sounds imaginary. She traveled from Indianapolis, where she was born, to New York, then boat to the Panama Isthmus, on to San Francisco and then Nevada. The transcontinental railroad was not yet complete. To top it all off she traveled alone with her baby daughter, just a jingle of change and a few notes in her pocket. She traveled back a few years later. All her life she was a vagabond. Fed up with the antics of her first skirt-chasing husband she traveled again alone with her two young children to study art in France. Later, married to R.L.S., they sailed the South Pacific. Travel she did, and not always in luxury.
Usually she was fighting somebody or something – people or illness. She was a tremendously strong woman, clearly not an easy woman to live with. She broke society’s rules over and over again. She was one determined lady, set to do exactly what was necessary to achieve her goals. I did not find her goals selfish. Once married to the interminably sick Robert she had one goal, that being to keep him alive and aid him with his writing. Here again is another artist plagued by consumption. All medical authorities said living up in the mountain air would help. They tried Switzerland; he only grew sicker. So the warmth of the South Seas drew them, finally building their own home on a jungle covered island in Samoa. Does that sound like a dream world? Well, she built the pig-pens, planted the gardens, braved cyclones alone, continually caring for the health and career of the acclaimed author. It was a characteristic of her personality to defend the weak. And R. L.S. was the same.
She broke every rule of propriety. R.L.S. was eleven years her junior. After the author’s death she had other affairs, lived with another man, almost forty years her junior, who married her daughter when she herself died! She broke all rules.
Following travels around the world, the reader is not only given the details of family disputes, tumults and joys but also the politics of the domicile nations. As a famed couple they could pull strings and did not hesitate to do so. Fanny and R.L.S took on the fight for the underdog. They supported the machinations of Hawaiian King Kalakaua against American powers. They sought to help the lepers on Molokai. The history of the leper colony is given. R.L.S. risked his own health to visit the island, attempting to change their conditions and the public view of lepers. . They involved themselves in the civil war and international disputes of the Samoan Islands. History is detailed. To enjoy this book the reader must be interested in such history. The artist colonies in France at the turn of the century, the growth of Impressionism, the European cultural climate in art and writing at the turn of the 19th Century - all of this is covered.
This book is written a s a biography. The author separates herself from the individuals described in the pages. Fanny Stevenson is honored by some and disclaimed by others. To seek the truth, the author has thoroughly analyzed and documented her sources. In this way the reader sometimes observes rather than empathizes with the individuals. At the back of the book the sources are discussed in detail, chapter by chapter. Rather than using quotes, the lines from prime sources are put in italics in the central portion of the book. I found the numerous and lengthy sections in italics visually difficult to read, although they were skillfully woven into the narrative. For my part, the critical analysis and detachment displayed in the writing style detracted from the book’s punch.
I enjoyed learning about Fanny’s personality, her life with Robert Louis Stevenson, the blossoming world of art in France, the political climate in Hawaii, the Molokai leper colony and finally life and political tensions in Polynesia, all at the turn of the 20th Century. For this reason I give the book four stars.
Usually she was fighting somebody or something – people or illness. She was a tremendously strong woman, clearly not an easy woman to live with. She broke society’s rules over and over again. She was one determined lady, set to do exactly what was necessary to achieve her goals. I did not find her goals selfish. Once married to the interminably sick Robert she had one goal, that being to keep him alive and aid him with his writing. Here again is another artist plagued by consumption. All medical authorities said living up in the mountain air would help. They tried Switzerland; he only grew sicker. So the warmth of the South Seas drew them, finally building their own home on a jungle covered island in Samoa. Does that sound like a dream world? Well, she built the pig-pens, planted the gardens, braved cyclones alone, continually caring for the health and career of the acclaimed author. It was a characteristic of her personality to defend the weak. And R. L.S. was the same.
She broke every rule of propriety. R.L.S. was eleven years her junior. After the author’s death she had other affairs, lived with another man, almost forty years her junior, who married her daughter when she herself died! She broke all rules.
Following travels around the world, the reader is not only given the details of family disputes, tumults and joys but also the politics of the domicile nations. As a famed couple they could pull strings and did not hesitate to do so. Fanny and R.L.S took on the fight for the underdog. They supported the machinations of Hawaiian King Kalakaua against American powers. They sought to help the lepers on Molokai. The history of the leper colony is given. R.L.S. risked his own health to visit the island, attempting to change their conditions and the public view of lepers. . They involved themselves in the civil war and international disputes of the Samoan Islands. History is detailed. To enjoy this book the reader must be interested in such history. The artist colonies in France at the turn of the century, the growth of Impressionism, the European cultural climate in art and writing at the turn of the 19th Century - all of this is covered.
This book is written a s a biography. The author separates herself from the individuals described in the pages. Fanny Stevenson is honored by some and disclaimed by others. To seek the truth, the author has thoroughly analyzed and documented her sources. In this way the reader sometimes observes rather than empathizes with the individuals. At the back of the book the sources are discussed in detail, chapter by chapter. Rather than using quotes, the lines from prime sources are put in italics in the central portion of the book. I found the numerous and lengthy sections in italics visually difficult to read, although they were skillfully woven into the narrative. For my part, the critical analysis and detachment displayed in the writing style detracted from the book’s punch.
I enjoyed learning about Fanny’s personality, her life with Robert Louis Stevenson, the blossoming world of art in France, the political climate in Hawaii, the Molokai leper colony and finally life and political tensions in Polynesia, all at the turn of the 20th Century. For this reason I give the book four stars.
July 10, 2019
Era la sola donna al mondo per la quale potessi immaginare che un uomo fosse pronto a morire.
Mia moglie
Leale e profonda, viva e vera
Con occhi d’oro e di mora selvatica
Diritta come una lama
Integra come l’acciaio
È colei che l’Artefice
M’ha dato.
Furore e valore, onore e fiamma
Un amore che la vita non ha mai potuto consumare
La morte stremare
L’inferno massacrare
È colei che l’Onnipotente
M’ha dato.
Maestra e tenera, amica e amante, sposa
Compagna del cammino
Fedele fino alla fine del viaggio
Anima libera, cuore pieno di assoluto
È la donna che Dio
M’ha dato.
(Robert Louis Stevenson)
Se vi sembrano esagerazioni di un uomo innamorato perso, allora leggete questa biografia di Fanny Stevenson. Conoscerete una donna straordinaria.
Io sono rimasta a bocca aperta: non me l’aspettavo così straordinaria!
Mia moglie
Leale e profonda, viva e vera
Con occhi d’oro e di mora selvatica
Diritta come una lama
Integra come l’acciaio
È colei che l’Artefice
M’ha dato.
Furore e valore, onore e fiamma
Un amore che la vita non ha mai potuto consumare
La morte stremare
L’inferno massacrare
È colei che l’Onnipotente
M’ha dato.
Maestra e tenera, amica e amante, sposa
Compagna del cammino
Fedele fino alla fine del viaggio
Anima libera, cuore pieno di assoluto
È la donna che Dio
M’ha dato.
(Robert Louis Stevenson)
Se vi sembrano esagerazioni di un uomo innamorato perso, allora leggete questa biografia di Fanny Stevenson. Conoscerete una donna straordinaria.
Io sono rimasta a bocca aperta: non me l’aspettavo così straordinaria!
September 15, 2020
3.5/5
Tell the truth but tell it slant; approach it circuitously. The first section is Dickinson's, the second my own. Ever since the years during which I was trained to automatically gravitate towards the whitely sanitized masculinity that masquerades as notable history, I have sought to fill in the gaps while still every so often indulging in following those trajectories that still feel so comfortably familiar to my reading sensibilities. As such, I've developed a taste for nonfiction that allows me to approach via slant those much repeated, lauded, and overbearingly drowned in the limelight names of many a white boy without which conventional history would be little more than a handful of naive aphorisms and bigoted fascinations. Recently, all I need to see is that the biography of this latest white boy is not yet another white boy for me to pick it up, but for a while, I was drawn exclusively to biographies of women associated with one or more figures of fame that had also been written by women. Wives, sisters, colleagues: domestically suffocated, involuntarily institutionalized, stripped of academic credit and prestige, denied the throne through one conniving machination or another, a tale that is admittedly very white but is still worth hearing with a critical ear. Fanny Stevenson is the latest of these, the much maligned wife of Robert Louis Stevenson, and I will admit, while this wasn't the most admirably credible of nonfictional pieces, it certainly was a great deal more sensually exciting than I had anticipated, to the point that I am glad that I am contemplating a shift in reading focuses that combines the usual ideals cultivated during the last five or so years with the more familiar pastures of my youth.
This nonfictional narrative was at times repugnant (Lapierre's constant appropriation of non-white bodies to eroticize white bodies happens a good ten to fifteen times throughout the course of it, at least), at times stirring (I deeply appreciated the portrayal of the times of the Pacific Islands that read nearly as credibly as Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen), at times seducing (I don't know when I'm going to get back to Robert Louis Stevenson, but I'm seriously considering trying on 'Treasure Island' at my this relatively aged point in my life). Lapierre replicated the internal musings of historical figures with her own experiences following in their migrating footsteps, cut and spliced together letters from one or more authors for the sake of informational expediency, and converted archived transcripts into living dialogue whenever she thought she could get away with it. The only reason I don't do more than note this is due to her honest discussion of her methods in the end notes, and I'll leave it to other readers to decide whether they're interested in having such hugely subjective treatments of historical facts periodically cropping in their nonfiction reading. For my purposes, they didn't crop up substantially or often enough to majorly interrupt my flow with the need to take such with a grain of salt, indeed, the generous inclusion of written correspondence between Fanny, Louis, spouses, children, parents, friends, and naysayers counterbalanced much of the feeling of disbelief that the more handwavy sections generated. As such, I generally made my way through this in an enjoyable fashion, especially since evocations of beautiful natural landscapes and faintly purplish prose are fine by me, so long as an author isn't too frequently odiously white in their descriptions.
Beyond all that narratological talk, there was much I hadn't expected from Fanny Van de Grift then Fanny Osbourne then Fanny Stevenson. Following her first husband along a hellish inter-Oceanic trail to a lfrontier life led among indigenous people and mining towns while barely in her twenties; cultivating artistic pursuits as a more settled mother of three amongst the salons of Oakland, California and alongside the singular Marie Bashkirtseff in France; and, much further on, involving herself in the pre-colonial skirmishes that would ultimately devastate much of the native self-governance that she had learned to love and, more importantly, to respect. I liked all that I read that went against the grain of what is conventionally taught, and while Lapierre got on my nerves at times with her rhapsodizing about 'dark skin' (Stevenson looks flat white to me in all of the photographs included in this work, which span from her youngest years to her final ones) and tiny hands and whatnot, she did enough to work against standard narratives to satisfy me, even if it were only to even more effectively resist historical infantalizing treatments of RLS by building up the writer into some paragon of social justice. Still, that last part did indeed deeply interest me, and it is definitely a significant part of my motivation to revisit an author whose Jekyll and Hyde I made the acquaintance far too long ago to give any definitive date for. It's nowhere near an urgent priority, but in terms of the 'if you had to pick a white boy' test, RLS did a lot better than most, something I can now see would likely not have come to be were it not for Fanny at his side.
Overall, not the best piece of nonfiction I've ever run into when it comes to learning my truth slant, but when it comes to the timeline of my shifting reading goals, this work would have had a hard time coming during a better period. Not only does it align with my readiness to go through the more mainstream author demographics whom I've for some time relegated to molder in storage, but it also fits the bill of the kind of contemporary work that has been on my shelves for far too long that I'm focusing on reading for the rest of 2020. In addition, the very last section devoted to the Stevenson's voyages in Pacific, the one I had been looking forward to during my entire reading, ended up being so delightful that, much like I discovered with the recently read 'Ring,' it would be good for me to carve out some small amount of space for certain pieces of carefully selected genre material in my reading habits. As it commonly is these days, much of what is supremely lauded is trash and almost all of what is treasure is buried deep, but what would such endeavors be without a sense of adventure?
Tell the truth but tell it slant; approach it circuitously. The first section is Dickinson's, the second my own. Ever since the years during which I was trained to automatically gravitate towards the whitely sanitized masculinity that masquerades as notable history, I have sought to fill in the gaps while still every so often indulging in following those trajectories that still feel so comfortably familiar to my reading sensibilities. As such, I've developed a taste for nonfiction that allows me to approach via slant those much repeated, lauded, and overbearingly drowned in the limelight names of many a white boy without which conventional history would be little more than a handful of naive aphorisms and bigoted fascinations. Recently, all I need to see is that the biography of this latest white boy is not yet another white boy for me to pick it up, but for a while, I was drawn exclusively to biographies of women associated with one or more figures of fame that had also been written by women. Wives, sisters, colleagues: domestically suffocated, involuntarily institutionalized, stripped of academic credit and prestige, denied the throne through one conniving machination or another, a tale that is admittedly very white but is still worth hearing with a critical ear. Fanny Stevenson is the latest of these, the much maligned wife of Robert Louis Stevenson, and I will admit, while this wasn't the most admirably credible of nonfictional pieces, it certainly was a great deal more sensually exciting than I had anticipated, to the point that I am glad that I am contemplating a shift in reading focuses that combines the usual ideals cultivated during the last five or so years with the more familiar pastures of my youth.
This nonfictional narrative was at times repugnant (Lapierre's constant appropriation of non-white bodies to eroticize white bodies happens a good ten to fifteen times throughout the course of it, at least), at times stirring (I deeply appreciated the portrayal of the times of the Pacific Islands that read nearly as credibly as Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen), at times seducing (I don't know when I'm going to get back to Robert Louis Stevenson, but I'm seriously considering trying on 'Treasure Island' at my this relatively aged point in my life). Lapierre replicated the internal musings of historical figures with her own experiences following in their migrating footsteps, cut and spliced together letters from one or more authors for the sake of informational expediency, and converted archived transcripts into living dialogue whenever she thought she could get away with it. The only reason I don't do more than note this is due to her honest discussion of her methods in the end notes, and I'll leave it to other readers to decide whether they're interested in having such hugely subjective treatments of historical facts periodically cropping in their nonfiction reading. For my purposes, they didn't crop up substantially or often enough to majorly interrupt my flow with the need to take such with a grain of salt, indeed, the generous inclusion of written correspondence between Fanny, Louis, spouses, children, parents, friends, and naysayers counterbalanced much of the feeling of disbelief that the more handwavy sections generated. As such, I generally made my way through this in an enjoyable fashion, especially since evocations of beautiful natural landscapes and faintly purplish prose are fine by me, so long as an author isn't too frequently odiously white in their descriptions.
Beyond all that narratological talk, there was much I hadn't expected from Fanny Van de Grift then Fanny Osbourne then Fanny Stevenson. Following her first husband along a hellish inter-Oceanic trail to a lfrontier life led among indigenous people and mining towns while barely in her twenties; cultivating artistic pursuits as a more settled mother of three amongst the salons of Oakland, California and alongside the singular Marie Bashkirtseff in France; and, much further on, involving herself in the pre-colonial skirmishes that would ultimately devastate much of the native self-governance that she had learned to love and, more importantly, to respect. I liked all that I read that went against the grain of what is conventionally taught, and while Lapierre got on my nerves at times with her rhapsodizing about 'dark skin' (Stevenson looks flat white to me in all of the photographs included in this work, which span from her youngest years to her final ones) and tiny hands and whatnot, she did enough to work against standard narratives to satisfy me, even if it were only to even more effectively resist historical infantalizing treatments of RLS by building up the writer into some paragon of social justice. Still, that last part did indeed deeply interest me, and it is definitely a significant part of my motivation to revisit an author whose Jekyll and Hyde I made the acquaintance far too long ago to give any definitive date for. It's nowhere near an urgent priority, but in terms of the 'if you had to pick a white boy' test, RLS did a lot better than most, something I can now see would likely not have come to be were it not for Fanny at his side.
Overall, not the best piece of nonfiction I've ever run into when it comes to learning my truth slant, but when it comes to the timeline of my shifting reading goals, this work would have had a hard time coming during a better period. Not only does it align with my readiness to go through the more mainstream author demographics whom I've for some time relegated to molder in storage, but it also fits the bill of the kind of contemporary work that has been on my shelves for far too long that I'm focusing on reading for the rest of 2020. In addition, the very last section devoted to the Stevenson's voyages in Pacific, the one I had been looking forward to during my entire reading, ended up being so delightful that, much like I discovered with the recently read 'Ring,' it would be good for me to carve out some small amount of space for certain pieces of carefully selected genre material in my reading habits. As it commonly is these days, much of what is supremely lauded is trash and almost all of what is treasure is buried deep, but what would such endeavors be without a sense of adventure?
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill
-Robert Louis Stevenson, 'Requiem'
March 29, 2014
I was fascinated with the lives of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny Osbourne. They traveled the world in search of a environment that would suit Louis's condition. I found it amazing that they traveled and lived in the harshest conditions in the mid 1800's.....and loved it!
I love biographies....and this book did not disappoint. It's a long read and most of the story I was familiar with after reading "Under the Wide and Starry Sky" by Nancy Horan which I also enjoyed tremendously.....I have been inspired to read "The Voyage Windward" and other books about the Stevenson s.
I love biographies....and this book did not disappoint. It's a long read and most of the story I was familiar with after reading "Under the Wide and Starry Sky" by Nancy Horan which I also enjoyed tremendously.....I have been inspired to read "The Voyage Windward" and other books about the Stevenson s.
May 18, 2014
Oh, Fanny.
Fanny Stevenson endured a marriage of hardship and a philandering husband. Determined to study art, she took the brave step to leave the U.S. with her children in tow. Meeting Robert Louis Stevenson at an artist colony, she fell in love head over heels. They had an amazing life together.
I like reading biographies to fill in the details so often left out in the fleeting memory of fame.
Great book about a woman before her time.
Fanny Stevenson endured a marriage of hardship and a philandering husband. Determined to study art, she took the brave step to leave the U.S. with her children in tow. Meeting Robert Louis Stevenson at an artist colony, she fell in love head over heels. They had an amazing life together.
I like reading biographies to fill in the details so often left out in the fleeting memory of fame.
Great book about a woman before her time.
April 19, 2010
This was an interesting and fun read, despite being horrifically long. For some odd reason, I thought the first half of the book about her life with her first husband was more interesting than her famous life with Robert Louis Stevensen. And I don't think she was a "violent" person at all. I think she went through horrendous trials that strained her to exhaustion both mentally and physically.
July 16, 2009
I would rather read a biography than just about anything else and this re-enforces my love of that genre. This is an extraordinary story of the woman behind Robert Louise Stevenson.
November 15, 2012
Excellent book. I love well written stories about real people who lived their life with inner dignity and courage!
August 11, 2022
Je me suis aussi souvenue que j’avais lu l’extraordinaire biographie de l’épouse de Robert Louis Stevenson, Fanny. Écrit par la superbe plume d’Alexandra Lapierre. Une femme incroyable qui, tel un chat, a vécu neuf vies… Quand on lit le récit de sa vie, on se demande comment elle a fait pour passer au travers de ces événements qui composent sa vie. Trois maris, accouchements improbables, maladie incurable, misère inimaginable… Un roman savoureux!!! J’ai tellement adoré ce livre que j’ai lu les annexes en entier!!!
March 3, 2020
Trop longue. Trop mélodramatique. Trop de passages qui décrivent le monologue intérieur de personnages (comment peut-on savoir? Soit c’est une biographie, soit c’est une nouvelle. Ceci est un mélange des deux). Mais l’histoire même à des moments interessants: pour moi les plus interessants était le séjour dans les mines d’or de San Francisco; et les voyages dans les lies Pacifiques.
September 3, 2023
J ai trouve les descriptions tres longues mais kivre interessant sur la vie de robert louis stevenson racontee par sa femme Fany qu il epouse alors qu elle a deja eu 2 enfants avec un autre mari aux etats unis en 1876.
July 9, 2020
Que dire, une passion pour ce livre - puis je bloque vers les trois quarts, impossible de continuer... quelques scènes extrêmement dures
September 21, 2021
I just loved this book. I read it several years ago. So much so that I had to travel to Samoa to visit their home. An amazing story and woman.
March 20, 2022
Amazing life story.
April 2, 2022
Wonderful book about the life of the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson
October 27, 2022
Loved this book for the characters description and the tales of RLS.
May 12, 2012
Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne Stevenson was a remarkable woman who seemed to live several different lives in one lifespan. She traveled back and forth between the civilized world and the barbarous regions at the edge of society, not with aplomb, but with gritty determination. One of her acquaintances said that you either loved her or hated her. I loved to read about her and definitely admire her pluck, but am not quite sure what I would have thought of Fanny Stevenson had our paths crossed in real life.
As to how the book was written, I have my problems with Ms. LaPierre. Is this a biography or a novelization? Parts of the book are dramatized and if this were a novel, and scenes are acted out, and told from various viewpoints of the characters involved. These are not “characters,” however, but real people. I would rather have read a straight biography of this fascinating woman than have scenes enacted. We get an almost moment-by-moment description of what went on in Fanny’s mind and life while she decided whether to stay with her husband or leave him for RLS, but other phases or her life are skimmed over. She meets RLS while he is baring earning a living as a writer, and once she marries him he is a famous author. When exactly did this happen? We see her mental illness from her daughter’s prospective, who thinks to herself, “Oh, I should have mentioned to the doctor that mother thought she was pregnant with ten babies, and made the house she was building especially large to accommodate them all.” What?!?!?! Not enough facts for a biography; not enough insight for a novel.
I have given it four stars mainly because I found Fanny so interesting.
As to how the book was written, I have my problems with Ms. LaPierre. Is this a biography or a novelization? Parts of the book are dramatized and if this were a novel, and scenes are acted out, and told from various viewpoints of the characters involved. These are not “characters,” however, but real people. I would rather have read a straight biography of this fascinating woman than have scenes enacted. We get an almost moment-by-moment description of what went on in Fanny’s mind and life while she decided whether to stay with her husband or leave him for RLS, but other phases or her life are skimmed over. She meets RLS while he is baring earning a living as a writer, and once she marries him he is a famous author. When exactly did this happen? We see her mental illness from her daughter’s prospective, who thinks to herself, “Oh, I should have mentioned to the doctor that mother thought she was pregnant with ten babies, and made the house she was building especially large to accommodate them all.” What?!?!?! Not enough facts for a biography; not enough insight for a novel.
I have given it four stars mainly because I found Fanny so interesting.
January 18, 2012
I give this tome four stars, because it is exhaustive in it's content. I'm not entirely sure how the author could have pared it down without sacrificing the readers' ability to know their subject, Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne Stevenson, wife of Robert Louis Stevenson. She lived quite an interesting life, with her travels being at the forefront of her story. She seems to me like an accidentally worldly person; her first husband's fortune-seeking put her on a path of following him around the country. Then as a wife and mother, she was lacking personal satisfaction, and so headed to Europe to pursue artistic endeavors. There she met RLS, eventually decided to end her marriage to the philandering Sam Osbourne, and marry Stevenson. Quite scandalous in those days! The courage she had in building a life for herself and Stevenson on the Samoan islands is remarkable. She practically built their house herself, with few supplies and even less help. Her passion is also worth noting-she kept RLS alive by being willing to live wherever in the world his illness would go into remission. She knew that she could keep him alive by sheer determination, and she did. What I found most interesting about Fanny was her will to keep building and rebuilding her own life after her significant losses. All in all, an interesting biography of a woman I knew nothing about beforehand.
January 8, 2014
Why I will not read Under the Wide and Starry Sky" Under the wide and starry sky " by Nancy Horan, even though I fairly liked Loving Frank. Simply because The WomenThe women by TC Boyle was great and much more then Loving frank .
And now with this new book it is the same only reverse I have read Fanny Stevenson: A Romance of DestinyFanny Stevenson : between Passion and freedom by Alexandra Lapierre.
A wonderful story. It was fun and fast to read. The book focused mainly on stevenson's wife and it was good. But I am not sure I need to read another one . So if someone has read Nancy Horan book and Lapierre's book I would love to read about their comments.
I hate to pass a good book!
And now with this new book it is the same only reverse I have read Fanny Stevenson: A Romance of DestinyFanny Stevenson : between Passion and freedom by Alexandra Lapierre.
A wonderful story. It was fun and fast to read. The book focused mainly on stevenson's wife and it was good. But I am not sure I need to read another one . So if someone has read Nancy Horan book and Lapierre's book I would love to read about their comments.
I hate to pass a good book!
August 19, 2012
This is an excellent biography of Robert Louis Stevenson's wife translated from French. It is well documented, well written, and well translated. What a strong, strong woman who knows what she wants and goes after it often to the detriment of others and eventually to herself. She lives for the moment with little thought of consequences as long as adventure is involved. She devotes her life to keeping the frail RLS alive, his writing and his happiness all intertwined! Their family dynamics, their travels, and their devotion to each other are all fascinating. I read this for a book club meeting scheduled for next week, and I am excited for the discussion to begin!
January 26, 2008
This book looks at the fascinating life of Fanny Stevenson, the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson. She was born in mid-America and came to be the driving force in the career and life of the famous Scottish author. Both of their stories are vastly interesting. They are, of course, intensely complex individuals. She, much more so than he. This is one of the best biographies that I have ever read. Meticulously researched and expertly written. It is out of print, but look for it at the library or buy it used. You won't regret it.
July 27, 2016
Superb! I thoroughly enjoyed this comprehensively researched biography of quite a remarkably strong passionate woman, who lived her life through the greatest gift of love. Whose incredible ability to endure and adapt to some of life's harshest measures with unbelievable strength and courage, mark her as a very modern woman ahead of her time in history. At times overlooked, the sometimes vilified 'woman behind the man', Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson - the indelible Fanny Stevenson deserves our highest respect and remembrance Beautifully presented here.
November 8, 2011
quelle femme! quelle passion! quelle vie! quel amour! j'ai tout aime dans ce livre et Alexandra Lapierre a clairement eu un coup de foudre pour Fanny, coup de foudre qu'elle ne pouvait que nous faire partager. J'ai ri, j'ai pleure et j'ai eu envie de relire les RLS que je n'avais pas lu depuis mon enfance. A la lumiere de l'histoire de M et Mme RLS, "L'Ile au Tresor" et autres merveilles n'en devenaient que plus beaux. Merci
January 30, 2012
Alexandra Lapierre is a superb scholar and a wonderful storyteller. Fanny Stevenson's story is epic. I will never forget her fearless trek across Panama. Bonus: You get to know Robert Louis Stevenson as well. Visit Lapiere's site: http://www.alexandralapierre.com/en_s...
December 20, 2013
An incredible woman of her time. An amazing story of a symbiotic family that has some wild travels. Don't really understand the allure of Robert Louis Sfevenson. I would have liked to get into the head of Fanny more. Where the author got all her quotes stumped me. Way too long.
May 25, 2010
This is the biography of the wife of Robert Louis Stevenson. I found it fascinating. Though the detailed narrative became tedious at times, it was beautifully written and meticulously researched.
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August 4, 2011La vie de Madame Robert Louis Stevenson...passionnant !
August 25, 2016
There were parts of this book that were quite interesting, but in the end, the level of detail was just too exhausting to keep me interested.
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