Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of English literature. He was greatly admired by many authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Vladimir Nabokov.
Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the Western canon.
A collection of 24 poems from A Child's Garden of Verses. This is a nice selection of some of the poems from a book I have known all my life. Although Eve Garnett's original artwork for this book cannot be beaten we really enjoyed Erik Blegvad's accompanying illustrations.
Scotsman Robert Louis Stevenson penned some of the most famous stories, loved 200 years, to the present day. “A Child’s Garden Of Verses”, 1885, is my first reading of him. Critics snubbed popular books, exciting to most people. Robert became accepted as western canon and so he should be. His are such titanic adventures as “Treasure Island” and “Jekyll & Hyde” and his variety is unmatched! I own them and am making a fine start. I enjoyed this poetry suite very much. That punctuated with four stars is fair praise, when poetry is not a love of mine and these are for toddlers. On the other hand, this makes them simple and brief to absorb for a minor poetry reader. Animals, nature, regional, and common pastimes are my favourite topics.
Robert was only forty-four when he died. Erik Blegvad, the fantastic artist who beautified every inch of these pages, lived ninety-two years. It is not surprising that he is Danish. His airy pastel environments, with rudimentary features that sufficiently animate animal and human figures with emotion and spunk, remind me of old masters! His landscapes give the impression of being lush, in spare strokes. Other illustrations are detailed, like “The Moon” and “A Good Play”. The former is about cats and bats about at night in the city and the latter describes a child’s imagination, with parents reclined in a posh parlour.
Erik enlivened the brief poetry but a lot of emotion and thoughtfulness are in the verses as well, for I have favourites! “The Cow” and “To Any Reader” touched me most and I cherish the frequent reprisal of a loveable black cat.
“The friendly cow, all red and white, I love with all my heart: She gives me cream with all her might, To eat with apple tart.”
This is my 4th time reading this sweet treasury of poetry with Ambleside Online Year 1. We read a poem a day and memorize three selections for our first term.