"It's my belief that she thought Dr Jekyll, which was partly based on a dream, was not worthy of him. Yesterday, Liz Merry head of Phillips's book department, said the writer's wife apparently threw the manuscript on the fire because "she considered Dr Jekyll and the duality of man rather distasteful. The letter is expected to fetch some £1,500 at auction at Phillips in London on November 17. He is still known for the lines: "I am the master of my fate,/I am the captain of my soul". Henley, who was one-legged, was the model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island. It was written by her in 1885 to Stevenson's close friend and fellow poet WE Henley. Some 115 years later, Fanny's deed has been disclosed in a two-page letter on pages torn from a notebook. For the first time, the couple had enough money to live comfortably. It rescued the Stevensons from acute debt.
It was pirated in the US and in translation. Sermons were preached on it in thousands of churches, including St Paul's cathedral, London. Despite Fanny's view, it was an instant bestseller.
Within weeks, the new version of his pioneering novel about split personality was in print. Stevenson, an invalid almost deranged by tuberculosis and the effects of medicinal cocaine, had to spend the next three days feverishly rewriting and redrafting the 30,000-word story by hand.
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