Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson

Hardcover. Conditon: Very Good. ~1921-1931. Everleigh Nash & Grayson. Lothian Edition VII. Scarce.

Quarter bound in leather with cloth boards. Gilt lettering. Marbled endpapers. Clean and unmarked.

Virginibus Puerisque (1881) was the first collection of Stevenson’s essays. Containing what would have been regarded as personal essays in the tradition of Lamb and Hazlitt.

The essays promote a spirit of playfulness in defiance of both the hardships of human life and the restrictions imposed by bourgeois Philistinism. The volume did not sell well but had a good critical reception, confirming the author of Inland Voyage (1878) and Travels with a Donkey (1879) as one of the rising stars on the literary scene, notable for his youthful high spirits and elegant, if sometimes too showy, literary style.