Lloyd Osbourne

Born in San Francisco in 1868, Samuel Lloyd Osbourne was an American writer who grew up in an unusual literary world. After his mother, Fanny Osbourne, married Robert Louis Stevenson, he became Stevenson’s stepson and later one of his collaborators.

Osbourne worked with Stevenson on several books, including The Wrong Box, The Wrecker, and The Ebb-Tide. He also wrote on his own, producing fiction, stories, essays, and later a memoir, An Intimate Portrait of R. L. S. by His Stepson, which gives readers a personal view of Stevenson and the family’s travels.

His life took him far beyond California, and that sense of movement shows in his work. Remembered both for his own writing and for the part he played in Stevenson’s creative circle, Osbourne offers readers a link to the adventurous, globe-crossing literary world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.