Alexandra Lapierre

First published in France where it caused a literary sensation and became an instant bestseller, this is Alexandra Lapierre's celebrated, award-winning biography of Robert Louis Stevenson's wife. One hundred years after his death, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of such classic novels as Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, remains an ever fascinating figure. This is the remarkable story of his wife Fanny, the American woman eleven years his senior who influenced every facet of his life and work, and who remains in her own right one of the most truly independent and free-spirited women of her generation. Stevenson was to devote his life to this woman: he crossed continents in search of her; scandalized his family to marry her; built a life in the Pacific with her; survived tuberculosis because of her; and was encouraged and inspired in his writing by her. He was an unknown twenty-five year old Scotsman when he came across Fanny for the first time in the artists' colony of Barbizon near Paris. A mother of three, Fanny had left her unfaithful husband to come to Europe with her three children to learn how to paint. No greater abyss could have separated the young Stevenson from this eccentric American; and yet, it was love at first sight. Fanny's influence on the novelist has long been recognized but is often reduced to stereotype: either she is written off as an overpowering woman who controlled Stevenson or caricatured as a kind of angel who saved him. For the first time, in this acclaimed biography readers are given a clear, accurate portrait of the woman behind the genius who led a fascinating existence both before and after her marriage to Stevenson. ("She was the only woman worth dying for" is how Fanny's last lover described her in 1914; she was seventy-four at the time, he was twenty-eight.) Alexandra Lapierre spent five years tracing Fanny's life, from her early tumultuous years in America to her days after Stevenson's death. The author's relentless and thorough research drove her to discover Fanny's wardrobe and jewels, to climb the mount where she is buried alongside Stevenson, to study her paintings in Scotland, and to unearth her love letters. This captivating story illuminates the life of a woman whose headstrong ambition and boundless courage set her apart from her generation. She was, as Stevenson wrote of her, "heart whole, soul free," and as this extraordinary biography reveals, the essence of a modern woman ahead of her time.

"Born to the artist Orazio Gentileschi at the beginning of the 1600s, when artists were the celebrities of the day, Artemisia was apprenticed to her father at an early age. She showed such remarkable talent that he came to view her as the most precious thing he owned. But at the age of seventeen Artemisia was raped by her father's best friend and partner, Agostino Tassi. Soon the Gentileschi name was being dragged through scandal, for Artemisia refused, even when tortured, to deny that she had been raped. Indeed, she went farther: she dared to plead her case in court. For eight months all of Rome was riveted by the trial. Artemisia won the case, but in return she was ostracized from Rome and from her father.". "This is a story of the love-hate relationship between master and pupil, father and daughter, at a time when daughters belonged to their fathers and had no legal rights. Artemisia's talent was such that she overturned the prejudices of her time, winning the admiration of wealthy patrons, kings, and queens."--BOOK JACKET.

Rome au début du XVIIe siècle. Le peintre Orazio Gentileschi, dont toutes les cours d'Italie se disputent les tableaux, cloître dans son atelier sa fille, la talentueuse Artemisia. Cet ouvrage raconte l'amour tourmenté d'un père et de sa fille, leur ardente rivalité, le combat terrible qu'ils menèrent l'un contre l'autre pour que leur art triomphe, de Venise à Londres, de Paris à Florence.