1st group of family and household

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

19705

Title

p. 28, 1st group of family (Robert Louis Stevenson) and household

Description

The family and household staff of Robert Louis Stevenson gather on the veranda at Vailima on Samoa. All the people are named below in ink. In the back row are Joe Strong with a parrot on his shoulder; Margaret Stevenson; Lloyd Osbourne; Robert Louis Stevenson; Fanny Stevenson; Simi the butler. In front of them sit Elena the laundress; Taloja the cook; Belle and Austin Strong; Lafaele the cattleman and Tomasi the assistant cook. At the front are Savea the plantation boy; Arrick the pantryman and another boy.

Artist / maker

Davis, John

Date

1889

Size

18.9 x 24 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Writers' Museum

This image was taken at Vailima, Samoa on 11th May 1892.

The Samoan Islands are located in the South Pacific and lie halfway between Hawaii and Australia. The capital Apia, is situated on Upolu one of the largest of the 10 islands.

Margaret Stevenson (nee Balfour) was Robert Louis Stevenson's mother. Fanny (nee Vandegrift) was his wife, who is pictured here with Belle and Lloyd; her children from her first marriage to Sam Osbourne, Joe Strong, her son-in-law and Austin her grandson.

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

Homes > Residential buildings > Houses

People > Domestic > Servants

People > Entertainment and sports > Authors

Places > Oceania > Samoa

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