posted on 30 Jul 2017

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson illustrated by Hilda Boswell

Since it was first published in 1885, Stevenson’s collection of what are sometimes quite dark and controversial poems for children must have had countless reprints and as many illustrators. There have been luxurious high quality editions and bog-basic cheap reproductions on frankly dodgy quality paper with suspect bindings.

Almost all the copies I’ve seen have illustrators who were representative of the popular style of the day and even with copies that aren’t dated – like this one – it’s often quite easy to guess the publication date within the odd couple of years.

This particular book is decorated by Hilda Boswell (1903 – 1976) who began her illustrating career in the 1940s and became closely associated with popular anthologies of Enid Blyton’s stories – especially the so-called ‘flower’ and ‘holiday’ collections. She did the illustrations for Stevenson’s Garden of Verses in 1963 for Collins and this copy is almost certainly an early imprint if not the first edition. It was not a top of the range production but it is solid and serviceable, well bound in peach cloth covers with bright and colourful endpapers. This copy also has a very good dust jacket – often difficult to find with children’s books that have been well read.

The drawings are very much of their time – highly romanticised white, middle class children in idealised domestic and bucolic circumstances. The children are instantly recognisable ‘types’ for anyone who was in junior school in the 1960s – they are characters that pop up time and again in class readers or similar kinds of resources. Mommy and Daddy are also stereotypically portrayed – in their apron or pipe-smoking respectively – and there is also a maid who ‘does’ and an old-retainer with gardening duties. Middle-England captured in the certainty and prosperity of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

I have noted before on articles that appear on this website that children’s books can be fascinating time-capsules that tell us at least as much, if not more, about a period in time than any sociological study could. That’s certainly true of a book like this – open the pages and you time travel back over 50 years.

I bet your Kindle can’t do that.

 

Terry Potter

July 2017