Of the nine essays collected in this volume, seven had appeared in the ' Cornhill Magazine. ' The whole set range in date from 1874 to 1881, and thus belong to the period of Stevenson's life during which the papers in Virginibus Puerisque were written. The ' familiar studies ' are Victor Hugo's Romances, Some Aspects Of Robert Burns, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Yoshido Torajiro, François Villon, Charles of Orleans, Samuel Pepys, and John Knox and Women. In arranging them for republication R. L. S. prefaced them by some notes of self-criticism, in which he is at much pains to show where, as he thought, he had accorded less than full justice to his subjects.