A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1919

Ruth Mary Hallock

1876–1945

 

Ruth Mary Hallock was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. There she studied under Matilda Vanderpool, Frederick W. Freer, and Robert Blum, and was a participant in the school’s Ninth Annual Exhibition in March of 1903. By 1904, she had a number of illustrated books to her credit—for example, Stony Lonesome by Arthur J. Russell, The Story of a Short Life by Juliana H. Ewing, and Everyday Essays by Marion Forster Washburne. Much of her work was done for the education market and she contributed illustrations to numerous readers and primers. Although she had an active career through the 1930s, Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, published in 1919, is her best-known work.

“Foreign Children,” A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1919

I saw you toss the kites on high / And blow the birds about the sky

“The Wind,” A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1919

The rain is raining all around

“The Rain,” A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1919

Happy hearts and happy faces, / Happy play in grassy places

“Good and Bad Children,” A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1919

The world is so full of a number of things, / I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings

“Happy Thought,” A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1919