[STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS]. A Child's Garden of Verses. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1885.
Hardcover. First Edition (the true first issue with the rounded apostrophe in "Child's" and the smaller "of" in the title on the spine, and with no mention of "Second Series" on advertisement page). Full Cloth. Small octavo, (165 x 115 mm), pp. (2), [x], 101, (3 blk.). Bound in publisher's original blue silk-grained cloth with bevelled board edges. Spine ruled and lettered in gilt. Publisher's gilt stamped device on upper cover. Top edge gilt, other edges uncut. Authors adds facing half-title page. Imprint facing title-page and recto final textual leaf. Woodcut device on title-page. Initial and terminal blanks present.
Condition: NEAR FINE. Collated complete. Binding secure and square. Edges and points sharp. Covers largely clean with faintest signs of handling. Contents near immaculate with touch of browning to endpapers. Without inking or bookplates.
Note: A near fine copy in the preferred binding in which the apostrophe in the word "Child's" on the spine has a curved tail, quite scarce thus. Other copies of the first, and second, editions as well, have been noted on which this apostrophe resembles a small figure seven. A Child's Garden of Verses is a look at childhood, written by a master poet and storyteller. In this collection of sixty-six poems, Stevenson recalls the joys of his childhood, from sailing boats down a river, to waiting for the lamplighter, to sailing off to foreign lands in his imagination. [Grolier Childrens Hundred #49. Prideaux 14. Beinecke 192. Hayward 297. Booth and Mehew].
