This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Robert Louis Stevenson's childhood world comes alive in this charming collection of poems, dreams, and brief prose vignettes, where ordinary moments bloom into adventure. From seaside "sea wells" dug in the sand to bedtime voyages in "My Bed is a Boat" and "The Land of Nod," the child's imagination turns sleep, play, and shadow into wonder. In "The Land of Counterpane," a sickbed becomes a kingdom of soldiers and ships; in "My Shadow" and "The Land of Story-Books," familiar rooms open into forests, campfires, and far-off journeys. The prose pieces deepen this portrait of Louis as a boy of sympathy, resilience, and restless invention, whether building indoor ships, inventing fleets from leaves and toy boats, or dreaming of distant lands. The collection also includes a gentle tale of Tom, Alice, and a drifting toy ship that ends in kindness, as well as lyrical reflections on the lamplighter, the wind, the changing seasons, and farewell to a beloved country farm. Throughout, Stevenson's childlike voice celebrates curiosity, memory, and the beauty hidden in everyday life.

À propos de l'auteur

Stevenson, Robert Louis

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish writer born in Edinburgh in 1850, raised in a family of lighthouse engineers, and shaped from an early age by illness, travel, and a vivid imagination. Though originally expected to follow a practical profession, he devoted himself to writing and became one of the most distinctive voices of the nineteenth century, producing fiction, essays, poetry, and travel writing that still feel alive with energy and atmosphere. His work ranges from adventure and suspense to psychological depth and moral complexity, and he helped redefine what popular literature could do by combining entertainment with serious insight into human nature. Again and again, Stevenson explored the struggle between appearance and reality, the divided self, temptation, freedom, and the uneasy line between civilization and savagery—questions that remain strikingly relevant in a world still fascinated by identity, ethics, and hidden motives. His prose is admired for its clarity, rhythm, and storytelling power, and his legacy endures in the way he influenced modern adventure fiction, gothic storytelling, and the art of the literary short form. Today, readers continue to turn to Stevenson for narratives that are exciting on the surface but rich with deeper emotional and philosophical resonance. He will especially appeal to readers who love classic adventure, elegantly written suspense, and stories that entertain while also probing the mysteries of character and conscience.