Robert Louis Stevenson

Familiar Studies Of Men And Books Robert Louis Stevenson

way his views changed since the essays had been first written. The studies are "familiar" in the sense of "informal" or "conversational" in style. They attempt to bring their subjects to life, often by creating novelistic characterisations of the men and addressing the books from the standpoint of an engaged reader rather than a scholarly critic. Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1882) provided a kind of companion-piece to Virginibus Puerisque, reprinting the more literary and critical essays left out of the first collection. In his Preface, RLS describes the contents as "the readings of a literary vagrant".