Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/23

 INTRODUCTION

The present collection of hitherto unpublished poems gathered from the manuscripts of Robert Louis Stevenson will be found to contain much that is of keen interest to readers and of both sentimental and practical value to collectors. Nor is it likely that this interest and value will prove to be transitory, since the volume now offered, like its notable predecessors issued by The Bibliophile Society in 1916, must afford very important aid to future biographers and critics of a writer who has taken a high and secure place in the literature of the English-speaking peoples. Although the books of verse issued under the supervision of Stevenson himself and of his representatives may contain a larger number of finished, artistic products along with the few poems in which his genius found perfect expression, such as the best pieces of "The [ 17 ]