Südseejahre. Eine ungewöhnliche Ehe in Tagebüchern und Briefen

by Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne Stevenson, Robert Louis Stevenson

Unser zwölfter Hochzeitstag. Das ist unglaublich. Ebenso unglaublich, dass wir vor zwei Jahren hierher kamen, um im Busch zu leben«, notiert Fanny Stevenson, die zehn Jahre ältere Ehefrau des weltberühmten Schriftstellers, am 19. Mai 1892 in ihrem Tagebuch. Auf der Inselgruppe Samoa hatte das Paar ein Klima gefunden, das dem lungenkranken Robert Louis Stevenson in seinen letzten Jahren ein erträgliches Leben ermöglichte; diese exotische Episode hat der literarischen Welt eine ihrer romantischsten und beliebtesten Legenden beschert. Doch wie romantisch war diese Zeit wirklich?

Fannys Tagebuch, das nun erstmals auf Deutsch erscheint, gibt Einblick in ein Pionierdasein am Rande der Zivilisation, in dem sich die Stevensons zunehmend zu Anwälten der Urbevölkerung machten. Es zeigt eine geistreiche, kühne und überraschend emanzipierte Frau – aber auch Fannys Verletzlichkeit, ihre Ängste und nicht zuletzt die Schwierigkeit, im Schatten eines berühmten Mannes zu stehen. Ergänzt durch Auszüge aus Briefen Robert Louis Stevensons an einen Freund, sind Fannys Tagebucheinträge das vielschichtige Zeugnis einer ungewöhnlichen, von Eifersucht, Sorge und großer Zuneigung gleichermaßen geprägten Ehe.

Klassiker made by mare: edel ausgestattet, Leineneinband mit Lesebändchen im Schuber.

368 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1955

About the author

Frances (Fanny) Matilda Van de Grift Osbourne Stevenson was the wife of the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson.

While in Paris, she met and befriended Stevenson. Convinced of his talent, she encouraged and inspired him. He became deeply attached to her, but Fanny returned abruptly to California.

Stevenson announced his intention of following her, but his parents refused to pay for it, so he saved for three years to pay his own way. In 1879, despite protests of family and friends, Stevenson went to Monterey, California, where Fanny was recovering from an emotional breakdown related to indecision about whether to leave her philandering husband. Stevenson wrote many of his most 'muscular' essays in Monterey while awaiting Fanny's decision.

The lady ultimately chose Stevenson, and in May 1880, they were married in San Francisco. A few days later, the couple left for a honeymoon in the Napa Valley, where Stevenson produced his work Silverado Squatters. He later wrote The Amateur Emigrant in two parts about his passage to America: From the Clyde to Sandy Hook and Across the Plains. His middle-class friends were shocked by his travel with the lower classes; it was not published in full in his lifetime, and his father bought up most copies.

In August 1880, the family moved to Great Britain, where Fanny helped to patch things up between Robert and his father. Always in search of a climate conducive to Stevenson's ailing health, the couple travelled to the Adirondacks in the US. In 1888, they chartered the Casco out of San Francisco and sailed to Western Samoa. Later voyages on the Equator and Janet Nicoll with Lloyd followed. They settled in Upolu, at their home Vailima, where Stevenson died on 3 December 1894.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny...]

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can now add Fanny Stevenson to the list of women whose friendship I would have liked.

[Laura Roden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grippingly interesting for someone (like me) interested in RLS and/or life in the South Seas in general. A barely edited compendium of Fanny's diaries during their 3 years in Samoa, the book is startlingly well written: descriptive, flowing, energetic, thoughtful. A valuable fillip is that the editor has interspersed snippets of some of RLS's contemporaneous correspondence among the diary entries so that one can compare their perspectives. I'd call it a must-read for RLS and/or Pacific Island history enthusiasts, and it was an easy, enjoyable read too. I feel better informed about RLS, his family members and 19th century expat life in Samoa.
NOTE the copy I acquired is a hardcover print-to-order from India and beautifully made, my first experience with this service but I will return to them for other out of print titles.