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Lead book review

A marriage of radical minds: the creative partnership of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson

Fanny’s influence on her husband’s work was considerable, perhaps especially in the fine late novellas, rich in ironies about imperialism and the exploitation of South Sea islanders

10 August 2024

9:00 AM

10 August 2024

9:00 AM

A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson Camille Peri

Viking, pp.464, 31.99

It is hard to imagine any Victorian man living a fuller life in a flimsier body than Robert Louis Stevenson – and he certainly wouldn’t have managed it without the support of his partner and wife of several decades, Fanny Van de Grift. Born in Edinburgh on 13 November 1850, Louis suffered from countless childhood illnesses that limited his activity to reading books, writing stories and staging ‘pasteboard theatre’ productions with his nanny, or else travelling to health spas in Marseille, Genoa and Naples.

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