Fanny Stevenson Muse Adventuress and Roma - Softcover

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

The winner of Elle magazine's Grand Prize for 1994 has sold nearly a quarter million copies in Lapierre's native France and is now available in an English translation. Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson's claim to fame has been her marriage to Robert Louis Stevenson. Here, Lapierre shows her as more Johnson than Boswell. The derringer-toting, cigarette-smoking Fanny captivated men with her dark skin and gypsy clothing. A lover of vagabonds and dreamers, she was a courageous, passionate, devoted blend of Annie Oakley and Hester Prynne who crossed the Isthmus of Panama with her young daughter, Belle, to follow her first husband to the Nevada gold mines. Later, she would defy Victorian standards by moving to France with her three children to study art. There she met and married Stevenson with whom she trekked the continents in search of a climate to safeguard his fragile health. For Stevenson, Fanny was adventure. For Fanny, Stevenson was all artistry. Lapierre offers a superbly passionate rendition of truth that flows with the pace of fine fiction. All dialogue in the book was taken directly from Robert and Fanny's essays and letters, and where necessary, Lapierre injects first-person clarification in a manner that is enlightening rather than intrusive. A captivating blend of scholarship and style. Patricia Hassler