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Charles Lamb by Henry Hoppner Meyer

Charles Lamb (1775-1834). Portrait by Henry Hoppner Meyer (1782-1847), 1826. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Charles Lamb
Born February 10, 1775
London, England
Died December 27, 1834 (aged 59)
London, England
Pen name Elia
Occupation clerk
Nationality United Kingdom English
Citizenship British subject
Literary movement Lake Poets
Notable work(s) Tales from Shakespeare, Essays of Elia
Relative(s) Mary Lamb, sister

Charles Lamb (February 10, 1775 - December 27, 1834) was an English poet, fiction writer, literary critic , and essayist of the Romantic era, a close friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

Life[]

Overview[]

Lamb was born in London, his father being confidential clerk to Samuel Salt, one of the benchers of the Inner Temple. After being at a school in the neighborhood, he was sent by the influence of Mr. Salt to Christ's Hospital, where he remained from 1782 to 1789, and where he formed a lifelong friendship with Coleridge. He was then for a year or 2 in the South Sea House, where his elder brother John was a clerk. Thence he was in 1792 transferred to the India House, where he remained until 1825, when he retired with a pension of 2/3 of his salary. Mr. Salt died in 1792, and the family, consisting of the father, mother, Charles, and his sister Mary, 10 years his senior, lived together in somewhat straitened circumstances. John, comparatively well off, leaving them pretty much to their own resources. In 1796 the tragedy of Lamb's life occurred. His sister Mary, in a sudden fit of insanity, killed her mother with a table-knife. Thenceforward, giving up a marriage to which he was looking forward, he devoted himself to the care of his unfortunate sister, who became, except when separated from him by periods of aberration, his lifelong and affectionate companion – the "Cousin Bridget" of his essays. His 1st literary appearance was a contribution of 4 sonnets to Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796). 2 years later he published, along with his friend Charles Lloyd, Blank Verse, the little volume including "The Old Familiar Faces," and others of his best known poems, and his romance, Rosamund Gray, followed in the same year. He then turned to the drama, and produced John Woodvil, a tragedy, and Mr. H., a farce, both failures, for although the 1st had some echo of the Elizabethan music, it had no dramatic force. Meantime the brother and sister were leading a life clouded by poverty and by the anxieties arising from the condition of the latter, and they moved about from one lodging to another. Lamb's literary ventures so far had not yielded much either in money or fame, but in 1807 he was asked by W. Godwin to assist him in his "Juvenile Library," and to this he, with the assistance of his sister, contributed the now famous Tales from Shakespeare, Charles doing the tragedies and Mary the comedies. In 1808 they wrote, again for children, The Adventures of Ulysses, a version of the Odyssey; Mrs. Leicester's School; and Poetry for Children (1809). About the same time he was commissioned by Longman to edit selections from the Elizabethan dramatists. To the selections were added criticisms, which at once brought him the reputation of being among the most subtle and penetrating critics who had ever touched the subject. 3 years later his extraordinary power in this department was farther exhibited in a series of papers on Hogarth and Shakespeare, which appeared in Hunt's Reflector. In 1818 his scattered contributions in prose and verse were coll. as The Works of Charles Lamb, and the favor with which they were received led to his being asked to contribute to the London Magazine the essays on which his fame chiefly rests. The name "Elia" under which they were written was that of a fellow-clerk in the India House. They appeared from 1820 to 1825. The 1st series was printed in 1823, the 2nd, The Last Essays of Elia, in 1833. In 1823 the Lambs had left London and taken a cottage at Islington, and had practically adopted Emma Isola, a young orphan, whose presence brightened their lives until her marriage in 1833 to E. Moxon, the publisher. In 1825 Lamb retired, and lived at Enfield and Edmonton. But his health was impaired, and his sister's attacks of mental alienation were ever becoming more frequent and of longer duration. During one of his walks he fell, slightly hurting his face. The wound developed into erysipelas, and he died on December 29, 1834. His sister survived until 1847.[1]

The place of Lamb as an essayist and critic is the very highest. His only rival in the former department is Joseph Addison, but in depth and tenderness of feeling, and richness of fancy Lamb is the superior. In the realms of criticism there can be no comparison between them. Lamb is here at once profound and subtle, and his work led as much as any other influence to the revival of interest in and appreciation of our older poetry. His own writings, which are self-revealing in a quite unusual and always charming way, and the recollections of his friends, have made the personality of Lamb more familiar to us than any other in our literature, except that of Johnson. His weaknesses, his oddities, his charm, his humour, his stutter, are all as familiar to his readers as if they had known him, and the tragedy and noble self-sacrifice of his life add a feeling of reverence for a character we already love.[1]

Youth and education[]

Lamb was born in Crown Office Row, Inner Temple, London, on 10 February 1775, the youngest of 3 (surviving) children of John Lamb, a Lincolnshire man, who filled the situation of clerk and servant-companion to Samuel Salt (a member of parliament and a bencher of the Inner Temple).[2]

His father was successful in obtaining for Charles a. presentation to Christ's Hospital, where the boy remained from his 8th to his 15th year (1782-1789). Here he had for a schoolfellow Samuel Taylor Coleridge, his senior by rather more than 2 years, and a close and tender friendship began which lasted for the rest of the lives of both.[2]

When the time came for leaving school, where he had learned some Greek and acquired considerable facility in Latin composition, Lamb, after a brief stay at home (probably spent, as his school holidays had often been, over old English authors in Salt's library) was condemned to the labours of the desk-“ an in conquerable impediment ” in his speech disqualifying him for the clerical profession, which, as the school exhibitions were usually only given to those preparing for the church, thus deprived him of the only means by which he could have obtained a university education.[2]

Early career[]

For a short time Lamb was in the office of Joseph Paice, a London merchant, and then for 23 weeks, until the 8 February 1792, he held a small post in the Examiner's Office of the South Sea House, where his brother John was established: a period which, although his age was but 16, was to provide him nearly 30 years later with materials for the original Essays of Elia.[2]

On 5 April 1792, he entered the Accountant's Office in the East India House, where during the next 33 years the 100 official folios of what he used to call his true “works ” were produced.[2]

Of the years 1792-1795 we know little. At the end of 1794 he saw much of Coleridge and joined him in writing sonnets in the Morning Post, addressed to eminent persons: early in 1795 he met Robert Southey, and was much in the company of James White, whom he probably helped in the composition of the Original Letters of Sir John Falstaff; and at the end of the year for a short time he became so unhinged mentally as to necessitate confinement in an asylum. The cause, it is probable, was an unsuccessful love affair with Ann Simmons, the Hertfordshire maiden to whom his earliest sonnets are addressed, whom he would have seen when on his visits as a youth to Blakesware House, near Widford, the country home of the Plumer family (of which Lamb's grandmother, Mary Field, was for many years until her death in 1792, sole custodian).[2]

Family tragedy[]

In the late summer of 1796 a dreadful calamity came upon the Lambs, which seemed to blight all Lamb's prospects in the very morning of life. On 22 September his sister Mary, “worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery by attention to needlework by day and to her mother at night, ” was suddenly seized with acute mania, in which she stabbed her mother to the heart.[2]

The calm self-mastery and loving self-renunciation which Charles Lamb, by constitution excitable, nervous and self-mistrustful, displayed at this crisis in his own history and in that of those nearest him, will ever give him an imperishable claim to the reverence and affection of all who are capable of appreciating the heroisms of common life. With the help of friends he succeeded in obtaining his sister's release from the life-long restraint to which she would otherwise have been doomed, on the express condition that he himself should undertake the responsibility for her safe keeping. It proved no light charge: for though no one was capable of affording a more intelligent or affectionate companionship than Mary Lamb during her periods of health, there was ever present the apprehension of the recurrence of her malady; and when from time to time the premonitory symptoms had become unmistakable, there was no alternative but her removal, which took place in quietness and tears. How deeply the whole course of Lamb's domestic life must have been affected by his singular loyalty as a brother needs not to be pointed out.[2]

Lamb's earliest appearance as an author was made in the year of the great tragedy of his life (1796), when there were published in the volume of Poems on Various Subjects by Coleridge 4 sonnets by “Mr Charles Lamb of the India House.” In the following year he contributed, with Charles Lloyd, a pupil of Coleridge, some pieces in blank verse to the 2nd edition of Coleridge's Poems. In 1797 his short summer holiday was spent with Coleridge at Nether Stowey, where he met the Wordsworths, William and Dorothy, and established a friendship with both which only his own death terminated.[2]

In 1798, under the influence of Henry Mackenzie's novel Julie de Roubigné, Lamb published a short and pathetic prose tale entitled Rosamund Gray, in which it is possible to trace beneath disguised conditions references to the misfortunes of the author's own family, and many personal touches; and in the same year he joined Lloyd in a volume of Blank Verse, to which Lamb contributed poems occasioned by the death of his mother and his aunt Sarah Lamb, among them being his best-known lyric, “The Old Familiar Faces.” In this year, 1798, he achieved the unexpected publicity of an attack by the Anti-Jacobin upon him as an associate of Coleridge and Southey (to whose Annual Anthology he had contributed) in their Jacobin machinations.[2]

In 1799, on the death of her father, Mary Lamb came to live again with her brother, their home then being in Pentonville; but it was not until 1800 that they really settled together, their earliest independent joint home being at Mitre Court Buildings in the Temple, where they lived until 1809.[2]

At the end of 1801, or beginning of 1802, appeared Lamb's earliest play, John Woodvil, on which he set great store, a slight dramatic piece written in the style of the earlier Elizabethan period and containing some genuine poetry and happy delineation of the gentler emotions, but as a whole deficient in plot, vigour and character. It was held up to ridicule by the Edinburgh Review as a specimen of the rudest condition of the drama, a work by "a man of the age of Thespis." The dramatic spirit, however, was not thus easily quenched in Lamb, and his next effort was a farce, Mr H —, the point of which lay in the hero's anxiety to conceal his name “ Hogsfiesh ”; but it did not survive the its opening night at Drury Lane, in December 1806. Its author bore the failure with rare equanimity and good humour - even to joining in the hissing - and soon struck into new and more successful fields of literary exertion.[2]

Before, however, passing to these it should be mentioned that he made various efforts to earn money by journalism, partly by humorous articles, partly as dramatic critic, but chiefly as a contributor of sarcastic or funny paragraphs, "sparing neither man nor woman," in the Morning Post, principally in 1803.[2]

Charles Lamb by William Hazlitt

Portrait by William Hazlitt (1778-1830), 1804. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Literary success[]

In 1807 appeared Tales founded on the Plays of Shakespeare, written by Charles and Mary Lamb, in which Charles was responsible for the tragedies and Mary for the comedies; and in 1808, Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare, with short but felicitous critical notes. It was this work which laid the foundation of Lamb's reputation as a critic, for it was filled with imaginative understanding of the old playwrights, and a warm, discerning and novel appreciation of their great merits.[2]

In the same year, 1808, Mary Lamb, assisted by her brother, published Poetry for Children, and a collection of short school-girl tales under the title Mrs Leicester's School; and to the same date belongs The Adventures of Ulysses, designed by Lamb as a companion to The Adventures of Telemachus. In 1810 began to appear Leigh Hunt's quarterly periodical, The Reflector, in which Lamb published much (including the fine essays on the tragedies of Shakespeare and on Hogarth) that subsequently appeared in the earliest collective edition of his Works, which he put forth in 1818.[2]

Between 1811, when The Reflector ceased, and 1820, he wrote almost nothing. In these years we may imagine him at his most social period, playing much whist and entertaining his friends on Wednesday or Thursday nights;[2] meanwhile gathering that reputation as a conversationalist or inspirer of conversation in others, which William Hazlittt, who was for a time one of Lamb’s closest friends, has done so much to celebrate. When in 1818 appeared the Works in 2 volumes, it may be that Lamb considered his literary career over.[3]

In the summer of 1819 Lamb, with his sister’s full consent, proposed marriage to Fanny Kelly, the actress, who was then in her 30th year. Miss Kelly could not accept, giving as a reason her devotion to her mother. Lamb bore the rebuff with characteristic humour and fortitude.[3]

The establishment of the London Magazine in 1820 stimulated Lamb to the production of a series of new essays (the Essays of Elia) which may be said to form the chief corner-stone in the small but classic temple of his fame. The earliest of these, as it fell out, was a description of the old South Sea House, with which Lamb happened to have associated the name of a “gay light-hearted foreigner” called Elia, who was a clerk in the days of his service there. The pseudonym adopted on this occasion was retained for the subsequent contributions, which appeared collectively in a volume of essays called Elia, in 1823.[3]

Later life[]

Charles Lamb's Cottage

Charles and Mary Lamb's cottage, Bay Cottage, on Church Street in Edmonton, London. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

After a career of 5 years the London Magazine came to an end; and about the same period Lamb’s long connection with the India House terminated, a pension of £450 (£441 net) having been assigned to him. The increased leisure, however, for which he had long sighed, did not prove favourable to literary production, which henceforth was limited to a few trifling contributions to the New Monthly and other serials, and the excavation of gems from the mass of dramatic literature bequeathed to the British Museum by David Garrick, which Lamb laboriously read through in 1827, an occupation which supplied him for a time with the regular hours of work he missed so much.[3]

The malady of his sister, which continued to increase with ever shortening intervals of relief, broke in painfully on his lettered ease and comfort; and it is unfortunately impossible to ignore the deteriorating effects of an over-free indulgence in the use of alcohol, and, in early life, tobacco, on a temperament such as his. His move on account of his sister to the quiet of the country at Enfield, by tending to withdraw him from the stimulating society of the large circle of literary friends who had helped to make his weekly or monthly “at homes” so remarkable, doubtless also tended to intensify his listlessness and helplessness.[3]

A bright element in the closing years of his life was the friendship and companionship of Emma Isola, whom he and his sister had adopted, and whose marriage in 1833 to Edward Moxon the publisher, though a source of unselfish joy to Lamb, left him more than ever alone.

From 1833 till their deaths Charles and Mary Lamb lived at Bay Cottage, Church Street, Edmonton, north of London (now part of the London borough of Enfield.[4] While living at Edmonton, where he had moved in 1833 so that his sister might have the continual care of Mr and Mrs Walden, Lamb was overtaken by an attack of a streptococcal infection, erysipelas, brought on by an accidental fall as he was walking on the London road. After a few days’ illness he died on 27 December, 1834.[3]

The sudden death of one so widely known, admired and beloved, fell on the public as well as on his own attached circle with all the poignancy of a personal calamity and a private grief. His memory wanted no tribute that affection could bestow, and Wordsworth commemorated in simple and solemn verse the genius, virtues and fraternal devotion of his early friend.[3]

Writing[]

Charles Lamb is entitled to a place as an essayist beside Montaigne, Sir Thomas Browne, Steele, and Addison. He unites many of the characteristics of each of these writers—refined and exquisite humour, a genuine and cordial vein of pleasantry and heart-touching pathos. His fancy is distinguished by great delicacy and tenderness; and even his conceits are imbued with human feeling and passion.[3]

He had an extreme and almost exclusive partiality for earlier prose writers, particularly for Fuller, Browne and Burton, as well as for the dramatists of Shakespeare’s time; and the care with which he studied them is apparent in all he ever wrote. It shines out conspicuously in his style, which has an antique air and is redolent of the peculiarities of the 17th century. Its quaintness has subjected the author to the charge of affectation, but there is nothing really affected in his writings. His style is not so much an imitation as a reflection of the older writers; for in spirit he made himself their contemporary. A confirmed habit of studying them in preference to modern literature had made something of their style natural to him; and long experience had rendered it not only easy and familiar but habitual. It was not a masquerade dress he wore, but the costume which showed the man to most advantage. With thought and meaning often profound, though clothed in simple language, every sentence of his essays is pregnant.[3]

He played a considerable part in reviving the dramatic writers of the Shakesperian age; for he preceded Gifford and others in wiping the dust of ages from their works. In his brief comments on each specimen he displays exquisite powers of discrimination: his discernment of the true meaning of his author is almost infallible. His work was a departure in criticism. Former editors had supplied textual criticism and alternative readings: Lamb’s object was to show how our ancestors felt when they placed themselves by the power of imagination in trying situations, in the conflicts of duty or passion or the strife of contending duties; what sorts of loves and enmities theirs were.[3]

As a poet Lamb is not entitled to so high a place as that which can be claimed for him as essayist and critic. His dependence on Elizabethan models is here also manifest, but in such a way as to bring into all the greater prominence his native deficiency in “the accomplishment of verse.” Yet it is impossible, once having read, ever to forget the tenderness and grace of such poems as “Hester,” “The Old Familiar Faces,” and the lines “On an infant dying as soon as born” or the quaint humour of “A Farewell to Tobacco.”[3]

As a letter writer Lamb ranks very high, and when in a nonsensical mood there is none to touch him.[3]

Critical introduction[]

by Edward Dowden

Charle Lamb's nosegay of verse may be held by the small hand of a maiden, and there is not in it 1 flaunting, gallant flower; it is, however, fragrant with the charities of home, like blossoms gathered in some old cottage croft. To know his varying subtleties, his play of intellect, his lambent humour, one must turn to his prose writings; but the gentle heart, the unworldly temper, the fine courtesy, betray themselves in every utterance of Lamb.

It was in early manhood and in snatches of time that his earlist verses were written; he speaks of them as creatures of the fancy and the feeling in life’s more vacant hours, as derivatives from the poetry of Coleridge. And certainly there is less in them of Lamb’s own favorite, Burns, than of Bowles, whom Coleridge at one time idolised. In Coleridge’s volume they modestly made their appearance. "My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle under cover of the greater Ajax."

The larger number of his poems are occasional; a few are interesting as records of a love in idleness that gave unusual charm to the memory of some months in Lamb’s prime of youth. From the India House desk it was pleasant to wander in fancy along some forest-glade by the side of fair-haired Anna. But after all, his dear sister, even his good and pious grandame, was closer to Lamb than any beloved "mild-eyed maid." And did there not remain to console him that life-long comrade, his pipe, the parting from which for a season he celebrates in a piece of mirthful fantasy that would readily run from verse into the quaint prose of Elia?

For less pensive companionship he had now and again little Hartley Coleridge, or Thornton Hunt, a guileless traitor enduring imprisonment with his father when Lamb addressed him in verse. Nor in those innocent days of albums was Elia unacquainted with maiden-petitioners—Edith Southey, Dora Wordsworth, Lucy Barton — bashful yet intent to acquire the autograph. Lamb’s deeper and sadder heart lay for the most part in quiet concealment; but once at least, in the mournful music of his "Old Familiar Faces", its monody is heard.[5]

Quotations[]

  • "But, then, in every species of reading, so much depends upon the eyes of the reader..." — From Lamb's essay "On the Danger of Confounding Moral with Personal Deformity."
  • "He chose his companions for some individuality of character which they manifested. Hence not many persons of science, and few professed literati, were of his councils. They were, for the most part, persons of an uncertain fortune; ... his intimados, to confess a truth, were, in the world's eyes, a ragged regiment. He found them floating on the surface of society; and the colour, or something else, in the weed, pleased him. ... He never greatly cared for the society of what are called good people." — From Lamb's essay "A Character of the Late Elia."
Charles Lamb Memorial

Charles Lamb memorial, Watch House, Giltspur St., London. Photo by Lon Picman. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

  • "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once." — From Lamb's essay The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple; features in the preface of To Kill a Mockingbird.
  • "Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other." — features in the Essays of Elia, 1823.

Recognition[]

Anne Fadiman notes regretfully that Lamb is not widely read in modern times: "I do not understand why so few other readers are clamoring for his company.... [He] is kept alive largely through the tenuous resuscitations of university English departments."[6] Notwithstanding, there has always been a small but enduring following for Lamb's works, as the long-running and still-active Charles Lamb Bulletin demonstrates. Because of his notoriously quirky, even bizarre, style, he has been more of a "cult favorite" than an author with mass popular or scholarly appeal.

Lamb was honored by The Latymer Schoo;, a grammar school in Edmonton, a suburb of London where he lived for a time; it has 6 houses, one of which, "Lamb", is named after him.[7]

3 of his poems ("The Old Familiar Faces," "Hester," and "On an Infant dying as soon as born") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.[8]

Publications[]

Poeticalworksch01lambgoog 0001

Poetry[]

  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems on Various Subjects (includes 4 poems by Lamb). London: G.G. & J. Robinson / Bristol: J. Cottle, 1796
    • enlarged as Poems, Second Edition; to which are now added poems by Charles Lamb, and Charles Lloyd (includes 10 poems by Lamb). Bristol: N. Biggs, for J. Cottle / Robinsons, London, 1797.
  • Blank Verse (by Lamb and Charles Lloyd). London: T. Bensley, for J. & A. Arch, 1798.
  • Album Verses, with a Few Others. London: Moxon, 1830.
  • Satan in Search of a Wife. London: Moxon, 1831.
  • Poetical Works of Charles Lamb. Philadelphia: E.H. Butler & Co., 1858.[9]

Plays[]

Novel[]

Non-fiction[]

Juvenile[]

  • The King and Queen of Hearts. London: Thomas Hodgkins, 1805.
  • Tales from Shakespeare: Designed for the use of young persons (by Charles Lamb & Mary Lamb, attributed to Charles Lamb). (2 volumes), London: Thomas Hodgkins at the Juvenile Library, 1807; Philadelphia: Published by Bradford & Inskeep, and New York: Inskeep & Bradford, printed by J. Maxwell, 1813.
  • Mrs. Leicester's School (by Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb). London: M.J. Godwin at the Juvenile Library, 1809; George Town: J. Milligan, 1811.
  • The Adventures Of Ulysses. London: T. Davison for the Juvenile Library, 1808; New York: Harper, 1879.
  • Poetry for Children: Entirely original (by Charles Lamb & Mary Lamb). (2 volumes), London: M.J. Godwin at the Juvenile Library, 1809; Boston: West & Richardson, & E. Cotton, 1812.
  • Prince Dorus: Or, Flattery Put Out of Countenance. A Poetical Version of an Ancient Tale. London: Printed for M.J. Godwin at the Juvenile Library, 1811.

Edited[]

Collected editions[]

Letters[]


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.[19]

Charles_Lamb_(1775--1834)_--_'The_old_familiar_faces',_read_by_Tony_Britton

Charles Lamb (1775--1834) -- 'The old familiar faces', read by Tony Britton

Play performed[]

  • Mr. H----, London, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, 10 December 1806.[19]

See also[]

References[]

Poetry_Out_Loud_Isabella_Callery_recites_"Thoughtless_Cruelty"_by_Charles_Lamb

Poetry Out Loud Isabella Callery recites "Thoughtless Cruelty" by Charles Lamb

  • Barnett, George L. Charles Lamb. Boston: Twayne, 1976. ISBN 0805766685
  • Percy Fitzgerald. Charles Lamb: His Friends, His Haunts, And His Books. Folcroft, PA.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1978. ISBN 0841443599
  • PD-icon Lucas, Edward Verrall (1911). "Lamb, Charles". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 104-105.  Wikisource, Web, Aug. 11, 2020.
  • Park, Roy (ed.) Lamb as Critic. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. ISBN 0710003765

Notes[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 John William Cousin, "Lamb, Charles," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 227-228. Wikisource, Web, Feb. 4, 2018.
  2. 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 Lucas, 104.
  3. 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 Lucas, 105.
  4. Literary Enfield Retrieved 4 June 2008
  5. from Edward Dowden, "Critical Introduction: Charles Lamb (1775–1834)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, July 30, 2016.
  6. Fadiman, Anne. "The Unfuzzy Lamb". At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays. pp. 26–27. 
  7. Lamb, Charles "Best Letters of Charles Lamb." Best Letters of Charles Lamb (2006): 1. Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. 1 Nov. 2009.
  8. Alphabetical list of authors: Jago, Richard to Milton, John, Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 19, 2012.
  9. The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb, Internet Archive, Apr. 5, 2012.
  10. Poetry for Children (1878), Internet ARchive. Web, Sep. 14, 2013.
  11. Literary Sketches and Letters, Internet Archive, Apr. 5, 2012.
  12. Eliana: Being the hitherto uncollected writings of Charles Lamb (1864), Internet Archive. Web, Sep. 14, 2013.
  13. Mary and Charles Lamb: Poems, letters and remains, Internet Archive. Web, Apr. 5, 2012.
  14. The Complete Works of Charles Lamb, Internet Archive, Apr. 5, 2012.
  15. The Dramatic Essays of Charles Lamb, Internet Archive, Apr. 5, 2012.
  16. Poems, Plays and Miscellaneous Essays, Internet Archive, Apr. 5, 2012.
  17. Essays and Sketches, Internet Archive, Apr. 5, 2012.
  18. The Letters of Charles Lamb: Newly arranged with additions (1888), Internet Archive. Web, Sep. 14, 2013.
  19. 19.0 19.1 Charles Lamb 177-1834, Poetry Foundation, Web, Oct. 28, 2012.

External links[]

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PD-icon This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at Lamb, Charles

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