Virginibus Puerisque 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 volume brought together essays previously published in the prestigious Cornhill Magazine as well as essays printed in Macmillan's and London, and the previously unpublished "Some Portraits by Raeburn" and the second part of "Virginibus Puerisque". The essays promote a spirit of playfulness in defiance of both the hardships of human life and the restrictions imposed by bourgeois Philistinism.