On this day in 1894 Robert Louis Stevenson died, and on this day in 1896 the second edition of Hilaire Belloc's A Bad Child's Book of Beasts was published. Although now a footnote to his classic adventure novels, Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses was very popular in his day, and the literary histories regard it as "the most important collection of serious poems for children of the [19th] century." Belloc's comic verse has also remained popular -- his 150 other books have not -- and his Beasts take a place with Stevenson's Garden in the "Golden Age of Children's Literature," though in opposite sorts of chapters ... FULL STORY »
