"Street of Tautira, Fanny, RLS and Paerai", p.23

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19317

Title

p.23, Village street of Tautira, Fanny, RLS and Paerai

Description

Robert Louis Stevenson stands with his hands on the shoulders of Paerai. Next to them is Fanny Stevenson wearing a long striped dress. Palm trees and thatched roof huts can be seen in the background.

The photograph was taken at Tautira on Tahiti.
The image is from the photograph album entitled 'The Cruise of the Casco' of Robert Louis Stevenson's travels around Hawaii and French Polynesia in 1888.

Artist / maker

Osbourne, Lloyd

Date

1888

Size

10.2 x 12.5 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

This image was taken in November-December 1888.

Paerai was the adopted son of Ori a Ori's (sub chief of the village of Tautira) and his wife, Haapie. Adoption was widely practised in the islands, with children being brought up by other members of the family or by friends, rather than by their natural parents. Princess Moe had organised for the Stevenson party to move into Ori's house in Tautira after it became apparent that they were to have an extended stay on the Island. Ori, and his family moved to another house during this time.

Tahiti is one of the Windward Islands of French Polynesia, in the southern Pacific Ocean. The capital is Papeete which is situated on the northwest coast.

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.

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Related subjects

People > Entertainment and sports > Authors

Places > Oceania > Tahiti

Plants > Trees > Palms

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