Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers.

London: Chatto & Windus,, 1887. His mother's copy of his first book of essays Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title, "To my mother, Robert Louis Stevenson". Margaret Isabella Balfour Stevenson (1829-1897), known to her family as "Maggie", married Thomas Stevenson in 1848. The pair lived in Edinburgh, and there Margaret gave birth to RLS, her only child, on 13 November 1850. As a child, RLS was a late reader, learning at the age of seven or eight, but "even before he could write Stevenson was dictating stories to his mother and his nurse. When he was six he won a prize, given by an uncle, for his 'History of Moses', dictated to his mother" (ODNB). Margaret noted down and preserved many of RLS's childhood sayings, which the author later drew on in his book of poems A Child's Garden of Verses (1885). That collection includes his poem "To My Mother", which imagines Margaret reading his poems and remembering his childhood: "You too, my mother, read my rhymes / For love of unforgotten times, / And you may chance to hear once more / The little feet along the floor." Maggie and her son both shared a tendency to coughs and fevers, which meant they often needed to stay in warmer climates for their health. Following Thomas Stevenson's death in 1887, Margaret became "a remarkably enthusiastic and adventurous traveller, tolerant of discomforts and extreme temperatures, game for anything" (p. 16), and she accompanied her son and his wife to America and the Pacific, eventually settling with them in Vailima, Samoa. She returned to Edinburgh after her son's death in 1894. Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers is Stevenson's first book of essays, collecting material published between 1874 and 1881. The first edition was published in 1881; this copy is from the British issue of the second edition. Provenance: from the library of American industrialist and distinguished collector Arthur A. Houghton Jr. (1906-1990), with his morocco book label on the front pastedown. Houghton was president of Steuben Glass Works for 40 years, during which time he endowed the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and also served as president of both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Philharmonic. Octavo. Original red buckram, spine lettered in gilt, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Spine faded, extremities lightly bumped, free endpapers browned, small crack to gutter at half-title, contents clean. A very good copy.