A Wilder Shore

March 1, 2024

Peri, founder of the website Mothers Who Think, turns her attention to the unlikely romance between Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson. They met in France when she was married, with children, 10 years older than he, and both living within Victorian society--and yet forged a creative, loving, and stormy partnership. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2024 Library Journal

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2024
“There would be no Robert Louis Stevenson as we know him” if not for his wife, Fanny Osbourne Stevenson, according to this shrewd debut. Journalist Peri recounts how, from the couple’s introduction at a French artist colony in 1876 through Stevenson’s death in 1894, the pair traveled the world in search of climates that would ease Stevenson’s chronic respiratory ailments, spending time in San Francisco and southern England before settling in Samoa. Peri suggests the marriage was mutually beneficial; Osbourne provided Stevenson with medical care while he used his literary connections to get her short stories published in respected magazines. More importantly, Peri contends, was Osbourne’s editorial feedback on virtually everything Stevenson wrote. For instance, Peri notes that in Stevenson’s first draft of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Jekyll was evil and only used the Hyde persona as a disguise; however, Osbourne convinced him to lean into the tale’s themes of duality and to present the characters as moral contrasts. Peri offers a nuanced take on her subjects’ relationship, positing that while theirs was more egalitarian than most (Stevenson took the unusual step of insisting Osbourne receive credit as coauthor of their short story collection, More New Arabian Nights), “the couple’s verbal scuffles were notorious” and the burden of caring for Stevenson likely stunted Osbourne’s own literary ambitions. This detailed history gives Osbourne her overdue turn in the spotlight.

Starred review from August 1, 2024
Portrait of an unconventional literary marriage. Journalist Peri draws on considerable archival sources to create a perceptive portrait of the unlikely marriage of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) and Fanny Osbourne (1840-1914). Stevenson, "a university-educated writer from a prominent family in Scotland," had just passed the Scottish bar. Fanny grew up in Indiana, lived in a mining camp with her philandering husband and three children, and most recently had settled in San Francisco. Eager to escape a stultifying marriage, grieving the death of her eldest son, she took her remaining children to France, where she and her daughter planned to study art. There she met Stevenson, also eager to escape; he was intent on pursuing a writing career, much to his father's disappointment. They were a study in contrasts: Stevenson, skinny, unkempt, sickly; Fanny, attractive and forthright, with a personality "as big as the American frontier, with a blend of female sensuality and masculine swagger." They quickly fell in love. Peri recounts the couple's peripatetic journeys. They visited with Stevenson's family in Edinburgh and traveled to Davos, Switzerland, for tuberculosis treatment. In the English resort town Bournemouth, they kindled a friendship with Henry James, in town to care for his sister. They went to the U.S., where the author ofTreasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, andKidnapped was hailed as a celebrity, and to French Polynesia on the first leg of two years of travels. A chain smoker with many medical maladies, Stevenson died in Samoa. Fanny proved more than a caregiver for her invalid husband: "She was a sharp critic and observer, and had a colorful imagination, qualities that he valued and relied on," Peri comments, noting that he left his writing at her bedside each night for her to critique. Although Osbourne's work came after Stevenson's health and writing, Peri's extensive exegeses of her stories judge them to "sit comfortably and creditably among those of other female magazine writers of her day." A richly detailed chronicle of two eventful lives.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2024
Frances Van de Grift was raised to be spirited and independent, qualities that she would draw on throughout her adventurous life. As a young woman, Fanny married the charismatic Sam Osborne and settled with him in California during the gold rush of the mid-nineteenth century. Sam was a serial adulterer, and the marriage was not a happy one despite producing three beloved children. The diminutive, charming Fanny escaped her circumstances and moved with her children to Europe, enrolling both herself and her eldest child, Belle, in art school. After the tragic death of her youngest son, Hervey, Fanny was reeling. Her life would soon change again when she met the enamored Robert Louis Stevenson. Young Louis, as he was called, was unassuming and slated for a career in engineering when he met the beguiling Fanny. The compelling narrative reads like a cross between Henry James and Louisa May Alcott, while Peri's deep knowledge and extensive research are woven seamlessly into the texture of the story. An epic love story, rivaling that of the Fitzgeralds.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.