A Child's Garden of Verses

I had been hoping to intersperse this blog with some of the wonderful poems that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote -- but that will have to wait for a better time.

The book called A Child's Garden of Verses, is, variously -- a group of poems that RLS wrote that were specifically for children.  The collection first appeared (according to Wikipedia) in 1885 and contained something around 65 poems.

What I wanted to do was look at a few of the different illustrated editions that have come out over the years.  I happen to have several (wildly ) different editions of this book and I find the differences completely fascinating.

Starting off with this wonderful (but slim) volume :

Illustrated by Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata  - from  1969 - with a hologram on the front cover.

This second book is an over-sized, thin hardback book by Golden books

and features the stitchery of

Virginia Tiffany.

All the illustrations are

worked embroidery / needlecraft.

Very 1960's -70's but great!

Compare that to this:

This is a Pop-up edition (and unfortunately, it's sold, so I can't get a photo of the pop-ups).
This one is much more 1980's in style and very cutesy.

Even Tasha Tudor took a whack at the collection -- with a resulting compilation that reflects her wonderful detailed illustrations.

This book is one I've shown before -- it's part of the newest consignment  and it's illustrated by Maria L. Kirk with wonderful black and white illustrations. This compilation contains nearly all of the poems.

There are so many famous illustrators who have used this collection of poems to highlight their work -- This particular copy is illustrated by Martin & Alice Provensen.

 And finally (as I've run out of photos of different versions) -  this school text version of the collection which has about half of the poems, is illustrated by E. Mars and M. H. Squire. The illustrations in this collection are wonderful typical of the 1920's-30s.


This book is one that could make a great single-title collection (that's a collection that consists of a SINGLE title -- but with as many different editions / styles of the book as possible).

If you happen to have other editions for this collection -- send me a jpg and I'll be happy to post it.

Next time, I'll add some of the poems.