Several fairy stories published years ago in Our Young Folks and St. Nicholas, magazines for young people.
The Dynamiter, written in collaboration with her husband.
Introductions to her husband's works.
A number of short stories in Scribner's and McClure's magazines, among which "Anne" and "The Half-White" attracted the most attention.
The Cruise of the Janet Nichol, a posthumous work.
Her own estimate of her talents and achievements was extremely modest, and it was always with the greatest reluctance that she put pen to paper. Yet she was intensely proud of the work of any member of her family—whether it might be sister, daughter, son, nephew, or grandson—and seemed to get more happiness out of anything we did than from her own work.
She was appalled at the great flood of mediocre writing that has been pouring over the United States in the last decade or two, and speaks of it thus in a letter written to Mr. Scribner from her quiet haven at Sausal:
"If I had a magazine of my own I should bar from its pages any story in which a young woman urges a young man to 'do things' when he doesn't have to. There would also be a list of words and phrases that I would not have within my covers. But, if I had a magazine what would become of my peace and quiet that I care so much for? No—no such strenuous life for me! They may call houses 'homes' and spell words so that children and foreigners must be unable to find out how to pronounce them—I need not know of such annoyances in El Sausal unless I choose. I have before me a great pile of magazines—hence these cries. I read them with wonder and interest. There seems to be such an extraordinary quantity of clever, talented, ignorant, unliterary literature let loose in them. Where does it all come from? And why isn't it better done—or worse done? I suppose we might call it 'near literature.' Sometimes, indeed, it is very near. I suppose it is the public school system that is accountable. Well, I never believed in general education, and here's a justification of my attitude."
When one casts a backward glance over the life of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson, it cannot be said that she knew much of that for which she had always longed—peace. Her girlhood was cut short by a too early marriage. Her first romance was soon wrecked, and her second was constantly overshadowed by fear for the loved one. Storm and stress, varied by some peaceful intervals, filled the larger portion of her days, and at their end it was in storm and flood that her spirit took its flight. But it was a full, rich life, and had she had the choosing, I believe she would have elected no other.
After something more than a year had elapsed from the time of her death, Mrs. Stevenson's daughter, who had now become the wife of Mr. Field, sailed with her husband in the spring of 1915 for Samoa, bearing with them the sacred ashes to be placed within the tomb on Mount Vaea.