A Child's Garden of Verses
London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885.
First edition, first printing. [1], x, 101 pp. Bound in publisher's peacock-blue cloth over beveled boards stamped in gilt, top edge gilt. Near Fine with light sunning, wear, and foxing to covers, slight lift to cloth at fore edge of rear board. Hinges slightly exposed, offsetting and light foxing to endpapers, and contemporary bookplate and ownership signature to front endpapers. Housed in a custom teal morocco pull-off case with moderate sunning and light wear. Prideaux 14.
The first edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic collection of poetry for children, dedicated to his childhood nurse Cummy (Alison Cunningham). He was inspired to try his hand at verse after leafing through Kate Greenaway's Birthday Book for Children, delving deep into memories of his own bittersweet childhood. His letter to a friend on the subject is typically self-conscious:
"I have now published on 101 small pages The Complete Proof of Mr. R.L. Stevenson's Incapacity to Write Verse, in a series of graduated examples with table of contents....They look ghastly in the cold light of print; but there is something nice in the little ragged regiment for all; the blackguards seem to me to smile, to have a kind of childish treble note that sounds in my ears freshly; not song, if you will, but a child's voice."
Reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic responded rapturously to the ragged regiment, each quoting his favorite lines, and the book has never gone out of print.
Price: $2,800