A Child's Garden of Verses

Robert Louis Stevenson (Author)
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh in 1850. The son of a prosperous civil engineer, he was expected to follow the family profession but was finally allowed to study law at Edinburgh University. Stevenson reacted forcibly against the Presbyterianism of both his city's professional classes and his devout parents, but the influence of Calvinism on his childhood informed the fascination with evil that is so powerfully explored inDr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Stevenson suffered from a severe respiratory disease from his twenties onwards, leading him to settle in the gentle climate of Samoa with his American wife, Fanny Osbourne.

Eve Garnett (Illustrator)
Eve Garnett was born in 1900 in Worcestershire, and studied art at Chelsea Polytechnic and the Royal Academy School of Art. Whilst a student, she sketched the people of the East End slums and was haunted by the poverty she had witnessed, resolving to do something to bring the plight of the working-class family to people's attention.The Family from One End Streetwas originally published by Frederick Muller in 1937, followed byThe Further Adventures of the Family from One End Streetin 1956, andHoliday at Dew Drop Innin 1962. She died in 1991.

“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.