Charles Lamb : Essays

by Charles Lamb, Rosalind Vallance (Editor), John Hampden (Editor)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... NOTES I. A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA BY A FRIEND London Magazine, January, 1823 This paper was first published by Lamb in the interval between the two series of Essays of Elia. He seems to have intended it partly as a farewell to his readers, and partly as a piece of mystification. With the omission of the latter part, it was reprinted by Moxon in 1833 as an appropriate preface to Lamb's last essays. This apologetic selfrevelation and humorous analysis of his own character, half ironical though it be, shows the causes of his unpopularity and is a valuable commentary on his style. 1. the late Elia. When Lamb began to write for the London Maga zine in August, 1820, he assumed the pen name of Elia (pronounced by him Ell-ia) in memory of an obscure Italian clerk of this name whom he had known at the South-Sea House. 1 3-4. to see his papers collected into a volume. This volume included Elia's twenty-eight contributions to the London Magazine, August, 1820, to November, 1822, and an essay on Valentine's Day from the Indicator of February, 1821. It was issued from the press of Taylor and Hessey, London, 1823. "Eleven years after," says Mr. Charles Kent, "before the author's death, it was already out of print, a stray copy only by rare chance being purchasable at a book-stall." 14-5. the London Magazine appeared in January, 1820, as a monthly under the editorial direction of John Scott. Thirteen months later, when Scott was killed in a duel with Christie of Blackwood's Magazine, the London passed into the hands of Taylor and Hessey. In the five years of its existence, though not financially successful, it had many famous contributors, among them being Lamb, De Quincey, Hazlitt, Procter, Hood, Cary, Cunningham, Montgomery, Keats, Mitford, ...

181 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1833

About the author

Charles Lamb was an English essayist with Welsh heritage, best known for his "Essays of Elia" and for the children's book "Tales from Shakespeare", which he produced along with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764–1847).

Reviews

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an essayist it is Lamb's chief distinction that he introduced the intimate, familiar essay in English literature and inspired many subsequent writers. His essays are deeply and subtly personal. The subject is always himself, not however the more individual Lamb but Lamb as he was connected with his numerous friends and objects of London, the city he loved so much.

Excepting the fact of his insanity and his personal religious views, there is no minute detail of Lamb's inner and outer life that he has not revealed in his essays. He always takes his reader into confidence, establishes a bond of sympathy with them and speaks with an engaging frankness, mingling fact with fiction and thus making the whole essay something deeply interesting. There is no strain of vanity or egotism in his self-revelations.

He always writes with a wonderful humour. This brings out to the leading quality of Lamb's writings namely, his inimitable humour. Lamb is in the opinion of many, the finest of English humorists. He had ears ready and an eye always open for the odd and the strange and this he made the object of laughter - not a cruel, sardonic laughter of a cynic but of one who is full of sympathy. This is why his humour has been called a 'rainbow humour' in which laughter and tears lie side by side.

As Compton-Rickett has justly observed: "Humour with him is never far from tragedy; through his tears you may see the rainbow in the sky; for his humour and pathos are really inseparable, from one another, they are different facets of the same gem. It would be a mistake to suppose this ebullience of a gay spirit as the irresponsible fooling of a jester (as Carlyle had done the mistake). But it is the natural expression of a hypersensitive man who laughed to prevent tears."

Living in the age of Romanticism and having such friends as Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lamb could not but be a deeply imaginative writer. Indeed, he has the imagination of a poet, which finds expression through the medium of prose. It is with the eye of a poet that he looked upon things. Sometimes memory supplies him with a theme for an essay and he uses it as a material for his fancy to play upon.

The common streets of London and her well-worn sights, he has invested with the glamour of the imagination. He is the great romancer of London streets. The style of Lamb is an attractive merger of rare elements. Its variety is astonishing. It ranges from the plain, business-like, and conversational to the most coloured, musical and poetical. But whatever its technical perfection the genius of the writer is always adequate to the occasion, revealing the author's meaning to us either with the copious wealth of images or with the directness of a well-aimed blow.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've only read the bits that don't appear in The Essays of Elia & the Last Essays of Elia (which I will read next). So far I've found his writing style pleasant to read and thought provoking, though I can't help but feel that the essay on Shakespeare could have been half as long and covered just as much ground (I also contend that Mr. Lamb is wrong on this point. I'm currently reading the complete works of Shakespeare a play at a time, since my grand plan to visit the globe in the summer and see a few was set aside due to Covid. While I still find the plays worth reading, I find something missing in a play not acted, and I think the suggestion that the plays are better of read does not hold up - especially because if a genius like Shakespeare decides to write a play, and not a poem or any other kind of thing, then I trust that an acted play is the right form for the tale being told).

[Jacob Bornheimer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eye-rollingly verbose.