“THE WHOLE CONTOUR OF THE CHILD’S HIDDEN WORLD”: FIRST EDITION OF A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES

STEVENSON, Robert Louis. A Child's Garden of Verses. London: Longmans, Green, 1885. 12mo, original blue cloth gilt over beveled boards, top edge gilt, uncut. Housed in custom slipcase. $5000.

First edition of Stevenson’s delightful and influential book of children’s verse, “the first sizable group of poems to… capture a child’s quality of imagination, sense of wonder and intense enjoyment of experience.”

"The power of this collection of simple verses lies in the fact that it… shows that life which a child lives within himself, and takes so completely for granted that he seldom speaks of it, usually because he cannot… Stevenson has here recaptured not only a part, but the whole of that hidden life, and has set those recollections forth in just the terms that children would use, could they put them into words at all… They were the first sizable group of poems to… capture a child's quality of imagination, sense of wonder, and intense enjoyment of experience" (Meigs, 293-4, 408). Prideaux 14. Hayward 297. Grolier Club Stevenson 55. Gerstley 20A. Gumuchian 5440. Osborne II:662. Bookseller's small ticket.

Endpapers lightly toned. Cloth with only very light rubbing to spine ends and extremities. A lovely copy in near-fine condition.