First published in 1885, ‘A Child's Garden of Verses’ is a collection of poetry for children by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, a collection that concerns childhood, illness, play, and solitude. Stevenson dedicated the poems to his nurse Alison Cunningham, who cared for him during his many childhood illnesses.
The collection first appeared under the title Penny Whistles but has been reprinted many times, often in illustrated versions. It contains about 65 poems including the cherished classics ‘Foreign Children,’ ‘The Lamplighter,’ ‘The Land of Counterpane,’ ‘Bed in Summer,’ ‘My Shadow’ and ‘The Swing.’
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. Mr. Stevenson was often ill as a child and spent much of his youth confined to his nursery, where he first began to compose stories even before he could read, and where he was cared for by his nanny, Alison Cunningham, to whom A Child's Garden of Verses is dedicated.
"Time which none can bind,
While flowing fast away, leaves love behind."
—Robert Louis Stevenson (A Child's Garden of Verses)
