On the hunt for a 70’s poetry book

[Sobloodyexhausted]

This is a real shot in the dark but I’ve had success tracking down things on Mumsnet before so you never know!

I’m trying to find a book of children’s verse my dad bought in the 70’s. To make matters more complicated he often travelled to the States so it might be an American book 😅

I don’t remember the title sadly although it was probably something like ‘an anthology of children’s verse’. It was a hardback book with lots of beautiful illustrations. The two poems I remember being in it were 1) The Garden Year by Sarah Coleridge (January brings the snow etc) and 2) Bed-time by Thomas Hood (it’s time little people were going to bed). I think the poems were mostly bucolic in nature. I remember a picture with a pheasant in and one of a plough man making his way home after a long day.

Any leads or suggestions would be very much appreciated. We lost my dad to cancer two years ago and finding this book again would mean the world to me.
He would have bought it in the mid to
late 70’s ( 74 - 78).

Treasury of poetry?

January Brings the Snows was definitely in it, and I think "I once had a lovely Doll dears, the prettiest doll in the world", "Will you walk into my parlour said the spider to the fly", The Jumblies ("far and few, far and few are the lands where the Jumblies live. Their heads are green and their hands are blue and they went to sea in a sieve"), What a place for a Snark, "The winds they did road, the trees they did wag, along came a beggar boy and put me in a bag" (about a squirrel) and one about going to the woods that I only remember the last lines "on every leaf of every tree, a fairy stopped and smiled at me".

Oh my goodness I think that’s it! I recognise all those poems although I think
We had a different cover. Also I’ve googled Hilda Boswell and found several other much loved books from childhood. I can’t thank you enough! 😍

This is one I loved and recently treated myself to a copy.

www.amazon.co.uk/Childs-Garden-Verses-Robert-Stevenson/dp/0141324627?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

I loved that book and the illustrations, and we had the Treasury of stories as well, but I didn't like it as much.
I can still recite a good number of the poems from it.

I had a book of poems for children in the early half of the 80’s that had a poem in with the lines “my sister worked in a factory calmly degutting pears, the green ones like spinach and the yellow ones like sick...”. At the of the poem she degutted her children. I remember it standing out as not the typical poem aimed at kids! Can’t remember what the book was called but would love to find it!

@Cornishsky

I had a book of poems for children in the early half of the 80’s that had a poem in with the lines “my sister worked in a factory calmly degutting pears, the green ones like spinach and the yellow ones like sick...”. At the of the poem she degutted her children. I remember it standing out as not the typical poem aimed at kids! Can’t remember what the book was called but would love to find it!

It's called : A Social Study by Michael Baldwin