A Wilder Shore

July 15, 2024
“There would be no Robert Louis Stevenson as we know him” if not for his wife, Fanny Osbourne Stevenson, according to this shrewd debut. Journalist Peri recounts how, from the couple’s introduction at a French artist colony in 1876 through Stevenson’s death in 1894, the pair traveled the world in search of climates that would ease Stevenson’s chronic respiratory ailments, spending time in San Francisco and southern England before settling in Samoa. Peri suggests the marriage was mutually beneficial; Osbourne provided Stevenson with medical care while he used his literary connections to get her short stories published in respected magazines. More importantly, Peri contends, was Osbourne’s editorial feedback on virtually everything Stevenson wrote. For instance, Peri notes that in Stevenson’s first draft of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Jekyll was evil and only used the Hyde persona as a disguise; however, Osbourne convinced him to lean into the tale’s themes of duality and to present the characters as moral contrasts. Peri offers a nuanced take on her subjects’ relationship, positing that while theirs was more egalitarian than most (Stevenson took the unusual step of insisting Osbourne receive credit as coauthor of their short story collection, More New Arabian Nights), “the couple’s verbal scuffles were notorious” and the burden of caring for Stevenson likely stunted Osbourne’s own literary ambitions. This detailed history gives Osbourne her overdue turn in the spotlight.