A Child's Garden of Verses

TO ALISON CUNNINGHAM I. Bed in Summer II. A Thought III. At the Sea-Side IV. Young Night Thought V. Whole Duty of Children VI. Rain VII. Pirate Story VIII. Foreign Lands IX. Windy Nights X. Travel XI. Singing XII. Looking Forward XIII. A Good Play XIV. Where Go the Boats? XV. Auntie's Skirts XVI. The Land ofCounterpane XVII. The Land of Nod XVIII. My Shadow XIX. System XX. A Good Boy XXI. Escape at Bedtime XXII. Marching Song XXIII. The Cow XXIV. Happy Thought XXV. The Wind XXVI. Keepsake Mill XXVII. Good and Bad Children XXVIII. Foreign Children XXIX. The Sun's Travels XXX. The Lamplighter XXXI. My Bed Is a Boat XXXII. The Moon XXIII. The Swing XXXIV. Time to Rise XXXV. Looking-Glass River XXXVI. Fairy Bread XXXVII. From a Railway Carriage XXXVIII. Winter-Time XXXIX. The Hayloft XL. Farewell to the Farm XLI. North-West Passage 1. GOOD NIGHT 2. SHADOW MARCH 3. IN PORT THE CHILD ALONE I. The Unseen Playmate II. My Ship and I III. My Kingdom IV. Picture-Books in Winter V. My Treasures VI. Block City VII. The Land of Story-Books VIII. Armies in the Fire IX. The Little Land GARDEN DAYS I. Night and Day II. Nest Eggs III. The Flowers IV. Summer Sun V. The Dumb Soldier VI. Autumn Fires VII. The Gardener VIII. Historical Associations ENVOYS I. To Willie and Henrietta II. To My Mother III. To Auntie IV. To Minnie V. To My Name-Child VI. To Any Reader Alphabetical List of Titles Alphabetical List of First Lines

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First published in 1885, Stevenson's verses so truly reflect the feelings of young children--about being small, the bliss of going up in a swing so high, discovering one's shadow, happiness and sorrow and dreaming--that they have never ceased to be an essential part of a child's library. Robinson's beautiful pictures originally appeared in 1896 in the first illustrated edition.

Throughout his life, Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was tormented by poor health. Yet despite frequent physical collapses—mainly due to constant respiratory illness—he was an indefatigable writer of novels, poems, essays, letters, travel books, and children’s books. He was born on November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, of a prosperous family of lighthouse engineers. Though he was expected to enter the family profession, he studied instead for the Scottish bar. By the time he was called to the bar, however, he had already begun writing seriously, and he never actually practiced law. In 1880, against his family’s wishes, he married an American divorcée, Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, who was ten years his senior; but the family was soon reconciled to the match, and the marriage proved a happy one.All his life Stevenson traveled–often in a desperate quest for health. He and Fanny, having married in California and spent their honeymoon by an abandoned silver mine, traveled back to Scotland, then to Switzerland, to the South of France, to the American Adirondacks, and finally to the south of France, to the South Seas. As a novelist he was intrigued with the genius of place: Treasure Island (1883) began as a map to amuse a boy. Indeed, all his works reveal a profound sense of landscape and atmosphere: Kidnapped (1886); The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886); The Master of Ballantrae (1889).In 1889 Stevenson’s deteriorating health exiled him to the tropics, and he settled in Samoa, where he was given patriarchal status by the natives. His health improved, yet he remained homesick for Scotland, and it was to the “cold old huddle of grey hills” of the Lowlands that he returned in his last, unfinished masterpiece, Weir of Hermiston (1896).Stevenson dies suddenly on December 3, 1894, not of the long-feared tuberculosis, but of a cerebral hemorrhage. The kindly author of Jekyll and Hyde went down to the cellar to fetch a bottle of his favorite burgundy, uncorked it in the kitchen, abruptly cried out to his wife, “What’s the matter with me, what is this strangeness, has my face changed?”—and fell to the floor. The brilliant storyteller and master of transformations had been struck down at forty-four, at the height of his creative powers.

“This beautifully illustrated edition of a collection first published in 1885 is a reminder of how well many of these poems hold up....As for the poems themselves, Stevenson’s interest in cultivating the world of the imagination is a great message for today’s busy, media-saturated culture.” — School Library Journal

'The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be happy as kings.'This classic collection of poems, beautifully illustrated by Brian Wildsmith, recreates the happy and magical world of childhood.