Essayist, poet and novelist Robert Louis Stevenson was the only child of respectable, middle-class, religious parents, brought up in the polite society of Edinburgh’s New Town. Adventurous and high-spirited by nature, he rebelled and adopted a bohemian life-style that scandalised his parents. While attending the University of Edinburgh he led a double life: by day a studious undergraduate, by night frequenting the drinking haunts and brothels of the Old Town.