Our Samoan Adventure

Fülszöveg

OUR SAMOAN
ADVENTURE
by FANNY and
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
With a Three-year Diary
by Mrs. Stevenson
Now Published for the First Time
«
Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by
CHARLES NEIDER
After more than sixty years of obscurity,
this diary brings to light the mind and heart
of the remarkable woman who shared Rob-
ert Louis Stevenson's last years on a South
Sea Island.
Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, Steven-
son's American wife, sailed with him from
San Francisco in June, 1888. She was not to
see America again until years after her hus-
band's death, for on Samoa they found at
last the only climate which meant life and
comparative health for Louis. There in a
house above the sea they lived for the re-
maining four years of his life, in a house-
hold which included Louis' mother, Fanny's
two children by a former marriage, her son-
in-law, and a retinue of Samoan servants.
This exotic interlude has furnished the
world of letters with one of its most... Tovább

Fülszöveg

OUR SAMOAN
ADVENTURE
by FANNY and
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
With a Three-year Diary
by Mrs. Stevenson
Now Published for the First Time
«
Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by
CHARLES NEIDER
After more than sixty years of obscurity,
this diary brings to light the mind and heart
of the remarkable woman who shared Rob-
ert Louis Stevenson's last years on a South
Sea Island.
Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, Steven-
son's American wife, sailed with him from
San Francisco in June, 1888. She was not to
see America again until years after her hus-
band's death, for on Samoa they found at
last the only climate which meant life and
comparative health for Louis. There in a
house above the sea they lived for the re-
maining four years of his life, in a house-
hold which included Louis' mother, Fanny's
two children by a former marriage, her son-
in-law, and a retinue of Samoan servants.
This exotic interlude has furnished the
world of letters with one of its most roman-
tic and popular legends. And Fanny herself
has become the subject of much mystery
and exaggerated conjecture. As her journal
now clearly reveals, she was actually, as
Charles Neider points out in his introduc-
tion, "an unusual human being in her own
right, frank as few are frank, courageous in
the extreme, and a writer in the best
American traditions. . . ." This is the rec-
ord of a witty and valiant lady struggling
with an alien environment, which included
everything from volcanoes in the garden to
Louis' political championing of a deposed
native king—all with a contagious enjoy-
ment. And through these pages rich in per-
sonality and event come the overtones of
mutual concern and sympathy which made
up that unusual marriage so few have under-
stood until now.
Charles Neider, who unearthed the manu-
script in a Monterey, California, museum,
has done a brilliant job of editing. Fanny's
journal entries are punctuated by excerpts
from Stevenson's Letters, rounding and bal-
ancing the whole into a valuable and moving
document which places the entire Steven-
son story on a deeper level of human com-
plexity. Vissza