Under the Wide and Starry Sky
Book description
'FABULOUS' The Times
'FASCINATING' New York Times
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At the age of thirty-five, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne leaves her philandering husband in San Francisco and sets sail for Belgium to study art, with her three children and nanny in tow. Not long after her arrival,…
Why read it?
3 authors picked Under the Wide and Starry Sky as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I grew up reading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and found this book about the woman who changed his life riveting.
I also loved it because Stevenson sails to French Polynesia and I have sailed to French Polynesia and written a book about it. So there are many connections for me. Plus, it’s about the real life of scorned woman, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne who flees San Francisco and her philandering husband and eventually falls in love with Stevenson.
An adventure that is history. Yes please!
From Leslie's list on powerful women in the 1920s and 1930.
Adventure and romance abound in Under the Wide and Starry Sky. The novel features Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife, sharp-shooting frontier woman Fanny Osbourne, and follows their remarkable, globetrotting life together. After meeting at an art colony in France, they spent nearly two decades together in a relationship filled with passion, drama, and heartache that played out across such varied landscapes as the coast of England, an abandoned mining camp in California, New York State’s Adirondack Mountains, and the South Seas, where they spent their last days together. The story made me cry at the…
From Shannon's list on classic writers as characters.
I’m married to a novelist, so I like books about writing couples. That’s what drew me initially to this novel about Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and the American writer Fanny Osborne. She was 38, ten years his senior when they met in France in the 1870s; married with children but separated from a philandering husband back in California. Stevenson was single, sickly, immature, and eccentric, but Fanny eventually realized this was outweighed by his kindness and imagination. By turns comic and tragic, the story moves from out West to Europe and back again. Horan’s portrayal of the strengths and…
From Lenore's list on romances of famous literary couples.
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