Louis and Fanny: The Stevensons [Carbon Typescript with Correspondence]

Item Details

Hollywood, Santa Barbara, Pacific Palisades: 1944-49. Carbon typescript, rectos only, [4] - title, contents, suggestions for illustrations, epigraph; 324pp plus 4pp - bibliography. Roughly 32 pages of correspondence, originals and carbons of letters signed between Hinkley, Mr. Harvey Taylor (agent), and Walter Frese (publisher at Hastings House). Cover sheet and prelims of typescript toned and with a few light stains, general edge wear and wrinkling from storage to several leaves. Correspondence toned and with some occasional edge tears. Generally neat and very good, and all housed in an Eaton's Corrasable Bond paper box with a few manuscript titles on front and side, bottom of box torn away.

Very interesting manuscript with correspondence from Laura L. Hinkley (1875-1949) who was known for her literary biographies of women: Charlotte and Emily (1945), Ladies of Literature (1946), and the present The Stevensons: Louis and Fanny, published posthumously (1950).  The correspondence includes discussion mainly of the first two titles, contracts and arrangements, rights with Hammond & Hammond who published the English editions of her works, etc.  Hinkley also mentions by name at least two other manuscripts, seemingly thrillers, The Dark Lady, and The Murder of Mrs. Haviland, which as far as we know were unpublished.

Hinkley's biography explores the unconventional marriage of Stevenson and his American wife, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne.  The work is less concerned with Stevenson himself than with the couple's domestic and creative partnership, particularly the adventurous Fanny's influence on the great Scottish author's literary life.