A Child's Garden of Verses

This is a collection of short poems about childhood, written in simple, musical language. Drawing on Stevenson's own sickly but imaginative boyhood in Scotland, the verses describe playing in bed when ill, watching the lamplighter, swinging in a garden, travelling in make-believe lands and wondering at shadows and stars.

The poems capture how a child sees the world, with its large fears and small delights, and they speak to adults who remember it. Many are still read aloud and learnt by heart, and the book is one of the most loved collections of verse for the young in English.