Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny, P. 49

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

20139

Title

p. 49, Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny

Description

Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny, standing outside a building with vegetation behind them. Stevenson is wearing white trousers, a light jacket and tie, and Fanny is wearing a long white dress. The negative from which this photograph was taken was crazed and damaged.

There is no handwritten caption linked to this image in the photograph album.

The image is from the photograph album entitled 'The Cruise of the Equator' of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels around the Gilbert Islands and Samoa in 1889.

Artist / maker

Unknown

Date

1889

Size

17.1 x 23.7 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

Robert Louis Stevenson spent the latter years of his life both travelling and resident in the Pacific. The family chartered the 'Casco' in San Francisco and spent several weeks travelling in French Polynesia, including an extended stay in Tahiti where Stevenson recovered from a bout of illness. After this the Stevenson group continued to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they landed in January 1889. In the summer of 1889 Stevenson embarked on a six month voyage through the Gilbert Islands to Samoa aboard the 'Equator'. It was here that Stevenson bought an estate he named Vailima. After another voyage, aboard the trading steamer the 'Janet Nicoll', Stevenson returned to Vailima where he was to spend the remaining four years of his life.

When Stevenson arrived at Samoa in December 1889, the island group was recovering from a civil war between the factions of rival kings, Tamaese, Malietoa Laupepa and Mata'afa Iosefo. The war involved Britain, the USA and Germany, each vying for control of the islands, and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Berlin in 1889 which restored Malietoa Laupepa as king.

Born in Edinburgh on 13th November 1850, Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, playwright and travel writer. Although he was plagued by ill health all his life, he was extraordinarily well-travelled, visiting Europe, America and the South Seas. He married American born Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and is best-known for works like Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (both 1886). From the late 1880s, Stevenson stayed in the South Pacific with his family on his own estate in Vailima in Samoa. He died here on the 3rd December 1894 of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 44, leaving what many consider his best work, Weir of Hermiston (1896) unfinished.

Exhibitions with this item

Other views of this item

Related images

Read how our collections have inspired people taking part in events, visits and community groups. Use the slider or navigation arrows to see more responses.

Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny, p. 49