Charity gets £500 from RLS poetry gift

A BOOK of poetry by Robert Louis Stevenson unearthed at a Scottish charity shop has raised £500 at auction.

The collection, written more than a century ago by the author of Treasure Island, was donated anonymously to the Oxfam shop on Glasgow’s Byres Road.

The copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses, first published in 1885, was a gift from Stevenson’s mother to her niece and nephew. It comes with the inscription: “To my GG Niece and Nephew at Chudleigh with kind love.”

A slip of paper inside revealed it came from the library of Dr Adam Watson, the author’s contemporary at Edinburgh University and his first cousin once removed.

Edinburgh-born Stevenson also wrote Kidnapped and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

The poetry book was sold at auction by Bonhams.