style of charles lamb in his essays

Charles Lamb as an essayist

Charles Lamb, born in 1775, is a distinguished English essayist whose life and work left an indelible mark on the literary landscape of the 18th century. Amidst personal challenges such as familial responsibilities and intermittent struggles with mental health, Lamb found a creative outlet in collaboration with his sister, Mary Lamb. Together, they produced a collection of essays that showcased Lamb’s unique blend of wit, humor, and profound insights into human nature. Lamb’s essays, notably compiled in “Essays of Elia,” reflect a personal touch, weaving autobiography seamlessly with literary criticism and social commentary. His writing style is characterized by a warmth and intimacy that draws readers into his reflections on everyday life. As an essayist, Lamb’s contributions transcend his era, capturing the complexities of the human experience with eloquence and enduring relevance.

Table of Contents

Essays of Elia

Charles Lamb’s collection “Essays of Elia,” which was published in the early 1800s, is regarded as a literary masterpiece that perfectly captures the spirit of Lamb’s unique essayistic approach. Published under the pseudonym Elia, the collection provides a varied and detailed examination of Lamb’s social observations, literary criticism, and personal views. The essays in this collection, which range from lighthearted tales to deep reflections, give readers a multifaceted and frequently funny viewpoint on the complexity of human existence.

Read More: Romanticism in English Literature

A few of the essays in “Essays of Elia” have received special recognition for their literary value. Notable examples are “A Dissertation upon Roast Pig,” a charming and sarcastic investigation of culinary indulgence, and “Dream-Children: A Reverie,” where Lamb expertly combines fiction and meditation on the truths of life. Lamb’s ability to combine a charming sense of humor with deep intellectual insight is evident in these and other essays, which have left a lasting impression on the literary world and solidified his reputation as one of the greatest essayists of all time.

Use of humor and wit

One thing that unites Charles Lamb’s essays is his grasp of wit and comedy. This sets his works apart in the field of English literature. One of Lamb’s best examples of humor is in his essay “A Dissertation upon Roast Pig.” In this essay, Lamb investigates the Chinese guy Bo-bo’s inadvertent discovery of roasted meat in a hilarious way. Along with engaging readers with a subtle sarcastic remark on human indulgence, Lamb’s humorous narrative and the strangeness of the circumstance produce a hilarious effect.

Lamb’s essay “Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist” is another excellent illustration of his wit. In this essay, he humanizes the game of whist by giving the cards human traits and viewpoints. In addition to being witty, Lamb’s deft use of satire offers a funny reflection on the societal conventions surrounding card games in his day. The essay turns into a lighthearted investigation of how we prefer to give inanimate objects meaning and personality.

Personal and autobiographical elements

Essays by Charles Lamb are distinguished by an overabundance of autobiographical and personal details, which give his work a cohesive and approachable feel. An important illustration of this is the essay “Dream-Children: A Reverie.” In order to explore the issue of unmet familial bonds, Lamb imagines a fictional family and muses on his own childless state. As Lamb struggles with his own circumstances, the autobiographical touch is evident and adds an emotional mix of longing and nostalgia to this narrative. Lamb crafts a thorough examination of the intricacies of family and human connection by incorporating his personal experiences into the essay’s narrative.

Read More: Romantic Age in English Literature

Lamb’s personal touch can also be seen in “Old China.” He recalls his bonding with an antique set of china dishes in this essay. Lamb expresses his emotive attachment to inanimate objects through this seemingly unimportant topic, giving readers a peek into his distinct outlook on life. This essay’s autobiographical components highlight Lamb’s gift for seeing the meaningful in the everyday.

Reflection on everyday life and human experiences

Charles Lamb’s essays demonstrate his astute ability to analyze the broader context of daily existence and draw lessons from seemingly ordinary events. In the essay “The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers,” Lamb raises a mundane occupation—that of the chimney sweeper—to the level of a metaphor for childhood’s innate innocence and purity. He provides a moving remark on social perceptions of labor and the strength of the human spirit. An other example of Lamb’s contemplation on ordinary existence can be found in “New Year’s Eve.” Here, reflecting on the change from one year to the next, he thinks on the passage of time and the cyclical nature of human existence. Lamb’s findings are universally resonant because of his introspective examination of the temporal flow, which captures the essence of shared human experiences.

Use of allusion and symbolism

A master of literary style, Charles Lamb uses a range of techniques to enhance his writings and leave a lasting impression on the readers. In “Dream-Children: A Reverie,” he emphasizes the concept of unachievable familial pleasure by referencing biblical and classical themes, such as the weddings of cousins Adam and Eve. The subtle anchors provided by these allusions encourage readers to explore wider cultural and philosophical settings, which enriches Lamb’s narrative. His works are also full of symbolism. For example, in “Old China,” the ancient china dishes have a symbolic meaning that relates to the enduring connections he discovers in inanimate items. 

Exploration of Lamb’s use of irony and satire

Lamb’s essays are further characterized by a clever use of satire and irony that lends a degree of complexity and critique to his reflections. In “A Dissertation upon Roast Pig,” Lamb uses satire to ironically examine social conventions related to food preparation, parodying human nature and excesses through accidental discovery of roasted pig. His use of irony is particularly evident in “The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers,” in which he satirically extols the merits of chimney sweepers to draw attention to the social inequities these unrecognized laborers endure. By using these techniques, Lamb shows that he has a deep understanding of the ability of satire and irony to reveal more profound truths while also drawing readers into a thought-provoking investigation of human behavior and cultural standards.

Examination of his prose style and language choice

Furthermore, a close reading of Lamb’s language choice and prose style reveals a unique and compelling narrative voice. The conversational tone of Lamb’s writing entices readers into an intimate and personal interaction. His use of words demonstrates a wide vocabulary and a deft touch between eloquence and simplicity, resulting in a literary texture that appeals to readers of all ages. Lamb’s ability to seamlessly blend literary devices with a captivating prose style contributes to the enduring appeal of his essays as both intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant works of literature.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, Charles Lamb emerges as a distinguished essayist whose influence echoes down the halls of literary history. His essays, which stand out for their singular fusion of wit, humor, and deep reflection, have left a lasting impression on the annals of literature. Lamb’s examination of both the common and extraordinary, along with his astute observations of human nature, established his position as a key figure in the development of the essay as a literary form. 

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Charles Lamb

Charles lamb biography, charles lamb’s writing style:, self-revelation in charles lamb’s essays, the familiarity of tone in charles lamb’s writings.

Charles Lamb started a trend of using Familiar tone in English essays than a formal tone. This trend was then followed by almost all of the essayists. Campton-Rickett says that there was not any other man famous in print media that Lamb and he turned the ordinary conversation into fine art. 

No Didacticism in Essays of Charles Lamb

The confused nature of charles lamb’s essays.

His essay “The Old and the New School-master” is the best example of his outrageous freeness in essays. The essay is apparently written to compare the new and the old schoolmaster; the first two pages of the essay are an exaggerated and outrageous description of Lamb’s own ignorance. The point to ponder is what is the connection between Lamb’s ignorance and the subject of the essay? 

Humor, Pathos, and Humanity

 charles lamb as a remarkable borrower, the chemistry of lamb’s literary style, works of charles lamb.

Charles Lamb: as an English Essayist

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Charles Lamb

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• Official Site of The Charles Lamb Society
• Poetry Foundation - Biography of Charles Lamb
• Charles Lamb - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Charles Lamb (born Feb. 10, 1775, London, Eng.—died Dec. 27, 1834, Edmonton, Middlesex) was an English essayist and critic, best known for his Essays of Elia (1823–33).

Lamb went to school at Christ’s Hospital, where he studied until 1789. He was a near contemporary there of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and of Leigh Hunt . In 1792 Lamb found employment as a clerk at East India House (the headquarters of the East India Company), remaining there until retirement in 1825. In 1796 Lamb’s sister, Mary , in a fit of madness (which was to prove recurrent) killed their mother. Lamb reacted with courage and loyalty, taking on himself the burden of looking after Mary.

Lamb’s first appearances in print were as a poet, with contributions to collections by Coleridge (1796) and by Charles Lloyd (1798). A Tale of Rosamund Gray, a prose romance, appeared in 1798, and in 1802 he published John Woodvil, a poetic tragedy . “The Old Familiar Faces” (1789) remains his best-known poem, although “On an Infant Dying As Soon As It Was Born” (1828) is his finest poetic achievement.

In 1807 Lamb and his sister published Tales from Shakespear , a retelling of the plays for children, and in 1809 they published Mrs. Leicester’s School, a collection of stories supposedly told by pupils of a school in Hertfordshire . In 1808 Charles published a children’s version of the Odyssey, called The Adventures of Ulysses.

In 1808 Lamb also published Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespear, a selection of scenes from Elizabethan dramas; it had a considerable influence on the style of 19th-century English verse. Lamb also contributed critical papers on Shakespeare and on William Hogarth to Hunt’s Reflector. Lamb’s criticism often appears in the form of marginalia, reactions, and responses: brief comments, delicately phrased, but hardly ever argued through.

Lamb’s greatest achievements were his remarkable letters and the essays that he wrote under the pseudonym Elia for London Magazine , which was founded in 1820. His style is highly personal and mannered, its function being to “create” and delineate the persona of Elia, and the writing , though sometimes simple, is never plain. The essays conjure up, with humour and sometimes with pathos , old acquaintances; they also recall scenes from childhood and from later life, and they indulge the author’s sense of playfulness and fancy. Beneath their whimsical surface, Lamb’s essays are as much an expression of the Romantic movement as the verse of Coleridge and William Wordsworth . Elia’s love of urban and suburban subject matter, however, points ahead, toward the work of Charles Dickens . The essay “On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century” (1822) both helped to revive interest in Restoration comedy and anticipated the assumptions of the Aesthetic movement of the late 19th century. Lamb’s first Elia essays were published separately in 1823; a second series appeared, as The Last Essays of Elia, in 1833.

Poems & Poets

Charles Lamb

Essayist, critic, poet, and playwright Charles Lamb achieved lasting fame as a writer during the years 1820-1825, when he captivated the discerning English reading public with his personal essays in the London Magazine , collected as Essays of Elia (1823) and The Last Essays of Elia (1833). Known for their charm, humor, and perception, and laced with idiosyncrasies, these essays appear to be modest in scope, but their soundings are deep, and their ripples extend to embrace much of human life—particularly the life of the imagination. In the 20th century, Lamb was also recognized for his critical writings; Lamb as Critic (1980) gathers his criticism from all sources, including letters.

The son of John and Elizabeth Field Lamb, Charles Lamb, a Londoner who loved and celebrated that city, was born in the Temple, the abode of London lawyers, where his father was factotum for one of these, Samuel Salt. The family was ambitious for its two sons, John and Charles, and successful in entering Charles at Christ's Hospital, a London charity school of merit, on October 9, 1782. Here he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge , a fellow pupil who was Lamb's close friend for the rest of their lives and who helped stir his growing interest in poetry. Lamb left school early, in late 1789. (Because he had a severe stutter, he did not seek a university career, then intended to prepare young men for orders in the Church of England.) In September 1791 he found work as a clerk at the South Sea House, but he left the following February, and in April he became a clerk at the East India Company, where he remained for 33 years, never feeling fitted for the work nor much interested in "business," but managing to survive, though without promotion.

Soon after leaving school, he was sent to Hertfordshire to his ill grandmother, housekeeper in a mansion seldom visited by its owners. Here he fell in love with Ann Simmons, subject of his earliest sonnets (though his first to be published, in the December 29, 1794 issue of the Morning Chronicle , was a joint effort with Coleridge to the actress Sarah Siddons—evidence of his lifelong devotion to the London theater). His "Anna" sonnets, which appeared in the 1796 and 1797 editions of Coleridge's Poems , have a sentimental, nostalgic quality: "Was it some sweet device of Faery / That mocked my steps with many a lonely glade, / And fancied wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid?"; "Methinks how dainty sweet it were, reclin'd"; "When last I roved these winding wood-walks green"; "A timid grace sits trembling in her eye." All were written after the love affair had ended, to Lamb's regret. His early novel, A Tale of Rosamund Gray (1798), is also rooted in the Ann episode.

After the death of Samuel Salt in 1792 the Lambs were in straitened circumstances, mother and father both ill. The elder brother, John, was living independently and was not generous to his family. On Charles (after an unpaid apprenticeship) and his elder sister, Mary, a dressmaker who had already shown signs of mental instability, fell the burden of providing for the family, and Mary took on the nursing as well. Two of Lamb's early sonnets are addressed to her: Mary, who was ten years older than Charles, had mothered him as a child, and their relationship was always a close one. Charles continued to write—a ballad on a Scottish theme, poems to friends and to William Cowper on that poet's recovery from a fit of madness. "A Vision of Repentance" ("I saw a famous fountain, in my dream") treats a truly Romantic theme—the hope of God's forgiveness for the sin of a repentant Psyche.

The tragedy of September 22, 1796—when Mary, exhausted and distraught from overwork, killed their mother with a carving knife—changed both their lives forever. She was judged temporarily insane, and Lamb at 22 took full legal responsibility for her for life, to avoid her permanent hospitalization. Thereafter she was most often lucid, warm, understanding, and much admired by such friends as the essayist William Hazlitt. She also developed skills as a writer. But she was almost annually visited by the depressive illness which led to her confinement for weeks at a time in a private hospital in Hoxton. (Lamb too had been confined briefly at Hoxton for his mental state in 1795, but there was no later recurrence.) Both were known for their capacity for friendship and for their mid-life weekly gatherings of writers, lawyers, actors, and the odd but interesting "characters" for whom Lamb had a weakness.

For the moment Lamb "renounced" poetry altogether, but he soon took it up again and began work on a tragedy in Shakespearean blank verse, John Woodvil (1802), which has autobiographical elements. While there are a few fine lines and the writing in general is competent but unoriginal, plotting and character are weak: it was never produced. "The Wife's Trial," a late play in blank verse, is of minor interest. It was published in the December 1828 issue of Blackwood's Magazine . His only play to reach the stage, Mr. H ——(in prose), was roundly hissed in London when it opened on December 10, 1806, but it was successfully produced in the United States thereafter.

Though soon after his mother's death he announced his intention to leave poetry "to my betters," Lamb continued to write verse of various kinds throughout his life: sonnets, lyrics, blank verse, light verse, prologues and epilogues to the plays of friends, satirical verse, verse translations, verse for children, and finally Album Verses (1830), written to please young ladies who kept books of such tributes. By 1820 he had developed what was to be his "Elia" prose style. He was the first intensely personal, truly Romantic essayist, never rivaled in popularity by his friends Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt. Many of Lamb's essays before those he signed Elia came out in Hunt's publications. While he is better known for his prose E. V. Lucas, Edmund Blunden , George L. Barnett, and William Kean Seymour, have pointed to his verse’s charm, honesty, strength of feeling, and originality. "His poetry," Seymour writes, "makes a pendant to his Essays, and it is a lustrous and significant pendant." The roles of artist and critic, of course, demand very different abilities: Lamb was, in correspondence, an able critic of the poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth , who sometimes took his advice. (He met Wordsworth, who became a lifelong friend, through Coleridge in 1797.)"

Of considerable interest are Lamb's blank-verse poems, which reveal his spiritual struggles after his mother’s death as he sought consolation in religion. In one, he doubts whether atheists or deists (such as his friend William Godwin, novelist, philosopher, and publisher of children's books) have adequate answers for the larger questions of life; other poems dwell on the death of the old aunt whose favorite he was (she also appears in his essay "Witches and Other Night-Fears"), on his dead mother with regrets for days gone, on his father's senility, on Mary's fate, and on his growing doubts about institutional religion. Several were published with poems by his Quaker friend Charles Lloyd in their Blank Verse (1798).

Soon after composing this group he contributed a piece on his grandmother (later developed in "Dream-Children") to Lloyd's Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer (1796). The culmination of this period was " The Old Familiar Faces " (written in 1798 and published in Blank Verse ), which ends:

                    some they have died and some they have left me,                     And some are taken from me; all are departed;                     All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

This poem is still anthologized; it tells with grace the story of his own youth, touching a universal human chord. Written in 1803 and published in Lamb's 1818 Works , "Hester" takes as its subject a young Quaker whom he had often seen but to whom he had never spoken, though he said he was "in love" with her. She married early and soon died; his poem, a delicate tribute to a charming girl who enhances even Death, ends with lines addressed to her:

                    My sprightly neighbour, gone before                     To that unknown and silent shore,                     Shall we not meet, as heretofore,                     Some summer morning,                     When from thy cheerful eyes a ray                     Hath struck a bliss upon the day,                     A bliss that would not go away,                     A sweet fore-warning?

These are his poetic triumphs. After them came more poems to friends, and also political verses, which are often sharp and clever, even venomous. "The Triumph of the Whale," on the prince regent, whom he sincerely hated, was published in Hunt's Examiner (March 15, 1812) and may have had a part in Hunt's two-year incarceration for libel, though the official charge was based on Hunt's editorial a week later. "The Gipsy's Malison," another harsh poem of Lamb's later years, on the ill-born child who is destined to hang, is sometimes anthologized. Like "The Triumph of the Whale," it reveals a bitter aspect of Lamb's complex nature, which shows rarely but persistently in his work. Among Lamb's humorous light-verse pieces, " A Farewell to Tobacco " is one of the best. He never gave up smoking or lost his taste for drink, though he tried often.

In 1808 he published his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, Who Lived About the time of Shakspeare , with commentary that was later admired by the younger generation of Romantics, particularly Keats , and established Lamb as a critic. For needed cash, he and Mary, at Godwin's request, wrote Poetry for Children (1809), in which their fondness for children shines through the moral verses. It did not reach a second edition, but the Lambs were much more successful with Mrs. Leicester's School (1809) and Tales from Shakespear (1807), which has never since been out of print.

In 1818 Lamb published his early Works , and in 1819 he proposed to Fanny Kelly, a popular comic actress who was later a friend of Dickens and founder of the first dramatic school for girls. She refused him, confiding to a friend that she could not carry Mary's problems too. Charles and Mary did know a sort of parenthood in their 1823 "adoption" of a teenage orphan, Emma Isola, who regarded their home as hers until she married Lamb's new young publisher, Edward Moxon, in 1833.

In the years 1820-1825 Lamb made his reputation as Elia in the London Magazine . By 1825, though he was still a clerk, Lamb's salary had risen after long service, and he was able to retire at 50 with a good pension and provision for Mary. He occupied his new leisure for several years at the British Museum, compiling more dramatic excerpts, which appeared in William Hone's Table Book throughout 1827, and contributing other writings to periodicals. When Album Verses appeared in 1830, followed by the humorous ballad Satan in Search of a Wife (1831), they were poorly received by critics; Last Essays of Elia (1833), from the London Magazine , made amore favorable impression.

Brother and sister had had to move many times as the reason for Mary's increasing absences from home became known. Their last move was to a sort of sanitarium at Edmonton, near London, in 1833. Here, while out walking one day in 1834, Lamb fell. He died of a bacterial infection a few days later. Mary lived on, with a paid companion, till 1847.

Lamb's essays were taught in schools until World War II, when critics such as F.R. Leavis contributed to a shift in critical approaches. Yet in the 1970s serious scholars increasingly discovered new virtues in Lamb’s letters. criticism, and essays. Since the 1980s, Lamb’s prose has enjoyed a renewed appreciation among scholars, marked by the publication of insightful biographies and critical studies. The Charles Lamb Society of London flourishes, and publishes a bulletin which has become impressively scholarly since its new series began in the 1970s.  

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Charles Lamb: Essays

By charles lamb.

• Charles Lamb: Essays Summary

In his Essays of Elia and its sequel, Last Essays of Elia , Charles Lamb explores a broad range of topics and works with various non-fiction tropes that often edge into the terrain of fiction. We see him writing obituaries, dream journals, diatribes, and tributes. What unifies Lamb's essays is his lyrical, conversational writing style. Like many fellow Romantics, he often employs purple prose and shows off his sharp wit, but the essays themselves remain accessible and often fun. Elia is the persona Lamb uses when writing essays, so instead of referring to Lamb or "the narrator," these synopses will refer simply to "Elia."

"Old China"

Elia details his pet obsession, old china. The essay starts with—typical for Elia—a flight of fancy, as he gets lost in a scene of a tea ceremony depicted on a cup. The essay veers into a conversation with Cousin Bridget about whether the days when they were poorer were more fulfilling than those of their comparative wealth.

"Dream-Children; A Reverie"

Much of this essay reads as Elia's elegy to his grandmother, Field , the magnanimous, fearless woman who took care of a mansion where Elia spent much of his childhood. He recounts Field as well as his late brother John to his children, but when Elia begins to tell the children about their mother Alice , they fade away, and Elia wakes up from a dream. He never had any children by Alice, since Alice chose to marry another man.

"A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig"

A comical essay which includes many nuggets of fiction, "A Dissertation" is Elia's attempt to imagine the provenance of people eating roast pork, a dish that he loves. He talks about an imaginary ancient boy who burns down his family's shack but eats the pig that died in the fire and loves it. The essay veers into a discussion of Elia's love of sharing food with other people, before ending with a moral conundrum of how animals that are to be eaten should be slaughtered.

"The South-Sea House"

Elia describes the bank where he used to work, the South Sea House, which was the site of a famous financial speculation hoax. He recounts his various co-workers as well as the owners of the bank, but eventually reveals that his account may be as much of a hoax as the scam that the bank infamously ran.

"Ellistoniana"

Elia writes an obituary for his friend Elliston , a beloved stage actor whose on-stage and off-stage presences were indistinguishable from one another. Elliston is described as a passionate man whose only regrets are that he was pigeonholed late in his career for doing what he did best.

"Rejoicings Upon a New Year's Coming of Age"

This is a fanciful essay which is effectively a work of fiction imagining a New Year's Day party where all of the days of the year are personified and mingle with one another. April Fool's is the master of ceremonies and creates delightful chaos throughout the celebration.

"Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading"

In this essay, Elia talks about his compulsive reading habit, praising his favorites, Shakespeare and Milton, while confessing that he'll read just about anything with text that is put in front of him. He rails against newspapers and especially the practice of reading them out loud in public settings, as this violates that individualistic style of reading that Elia favors.

"Grace Before Meat"

Elia is typically skeptical of hypocrisy in organized religion, but this is really the essay where he outlines the substance of his critique by way of articulating his own religious and moral convictions. He believe that grace is usually uttered insincerely, and that only the poor really have dignity in saying it, as they are truly grateful for the opportunity to have food on their table. This extends to a broader condemnation of the rich.

"The Old and New Schoolmaster"

Elia talks about the limits of his education based on the old style of pedagogy, which was wholly rooted in learning English and literature pertinent to it. The new schoolmasters know a little bit about everything so that their pupils' curiosity can always be satisfied. The essay ends with a letter from a schoolmaster about how alienated he feels from his students after the passing of his wife.

"The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers"

In an essay that is somewhat uncomfortable to read because of its treatment of race, Elia praises young boys who are chimney sweepers. He praises the tea they drink and their jovial attitude, before describing dinners that his late friend used to throw for the boys every year where they were treated like nobility. As with many of Elia's essays, this one elevates the nobility of the lower classes.

Charles Lamb: Essays Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Charles Lamb: Essays is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Which quality Charles Lamb a romantic writer?

As a Romantic, Lamb brought a key innovation to the somewhat new form, inserting his own personally to give the essays a conversational tone. His essays showcase his passions and anxieties, imbuing the non-fiction form with a personal and literary...

What is the major theme of "Poor Relation" by Charles Lamb?

The major theme is that of the "poor relation"... their irrelevance and unpleasant place in one's life.

Explain the theme of the essay ''A Dissertation upon Roast Pig''.

The essay describes the discovery of the exquisite flavour of roast pig in China in a time when all food was eaten raw. This is really a light hearted theme speaking to how odd it is that humans eat cooked animals at all.

Study Guide for Charles Lamb: Essays

Charles Lamb: Essays study guide contains a biography of Charles Lamb, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Charles Lamb: Essays
• Character List

Essays for Charles Lamb: Essays

Charles Lamb: Essays essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Charles Lamb: Essays by Charles Lamb.

• Charles Lamb and Spaces Separate from Rationality

Wikipedia Entries for Charles Lamb: Essays

• Introduction

Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb’s attitude toward poetry evolved as he matured. As a young man, he considered himself an aspiring poet. He experimented with rhythms, modeled his diction after Sir Philip Sidney and his sentiment after William Lisle Bowles, discussed theory with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and took pleasure in criticizing his own and others’ work. In his early verse, there is little of the humor, irony, or modesty that typify his later writing. Lamb is not only serious but also self-consciously so, dealing with weighty topics in an elevated style. His early poems are heavy with melancholy and despair, even before Mary killed their mother. The poems are also personal and confessional and suggest an adolescent indulgence in emotion. Writing to Coleridge in 1796, Lamb explained, “I love my sonnets because they are the reflected images of my own feelings at different times.”

Following Mary’s disaster, Lamb’s reality became as tragic as he had previously imagined. He wrote to Coleridge, “Mention nothing of poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind.” This was the first of several renunciations of poetry made by Lamb throughout his life, but—like similar renunciations of liquor and tobacco—it was temporary. In a few months, he was sending Coleridge new verses, but the subject matter was altered. Lamb turned to poetry for solace and consolation, composing religious verse. His interest in poetry had revived, but the sensational occurrences that influenced the rest of his life encouraged him to become one of the least sensational of poets. From this new perspective, he counseled Coleridge to “cultivate simplicity,” anticipating William Wordsworth’s preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798). In his next letter to Coleridge, he praised Bowles and Philip Massinger and said he favored “an uncomplaining melancholy, a delicious regret for the past.” Lamb’s early sentimentality had been displaced by real tragedy, and his poetry changed accordingly.

With the healing passage of time, Lamb’s literary interests shifted. In the years 1800 to 1805, he wrote several poems, but for the most part, these middle years of his literary career were spent as a journalist. Around 1820, Lamb again began to write poetry, but of a completely different sort. The last period of his poetic production had been spent writing album verse and other occasional poems. As he matured, Lamb outgrew his earlier confessional mode and turned to people and events around him for subjects. He used his imagination to a greater degree, coloring reality, creating fictions, and distancing himself from his subject. His poetry changed with him, and it came to reflect a fictitious personality similar to the Elia of the essays. Like the Elia essays, Lamb’s later poetry contains many autobiographical elements, but they are cloaked and decorous. In place of self-indulgent confessions is a distance and control not found in the early verse.

Lamb wrote and published most of his serious verse—that which is most often anthologized—in the period between 1795 and 1800. His best and worst poems are among these efforts, which are autobiographical and despondent. They mourn the loss of love, of bygone days, and of happier times. They vary greatly in form, as Lamb experimented with different meters and structures. He was most successful in tight and traditional verse forms and least successful in blank verse. In fact, his blank verse is bad, a surprising situation since his strength in more structured forms is in the control and variation of meter and rhythm.

A favorite form of Lamb’s throughout his life was the sonnet, which he began writing early in his career. Appropriately enough, two of his earliest and best poems are...

(This entire section contains 2662 words.)

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English sonnets, published in Coleridge’s Poems on Various Subjects (1796). This first significant publication by Lamb shows the influence of the Elizabethans on his poetry. His syntax, imagery, and diction suggest the practice of two centuries earlier. One of these sonnets, “Was it some sweet device of Faery,” mourns a lost love “Anna” and is clearly a response to the loss of Ann Simmons. The poem’s sophisticated rhythm, with frequent enjambment and medial stops, transcends its commonplace subject. Here, as often in Lamb’s poetry, the handling of rhythm turns what might be a mediocre effort into an admirable poem. His use of rhetorical questions in this sonnet is skillful, too. Unlike the stilted tone that such questions often provide, in this sonnet the questions actually help to create a sense of sincerity.

Another sonnet from the same volume, “O, I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,” also treats the subject of lost love. The poem is nicely unified by the images of wind and wave, and it reflects the Romantic idea of the unity of human beings and cosmos. It also presents another Romantic concept, the value of the imagination and the powerful influence of memory. This poem is a reminder that much of Wordsworthian theory was not unique to Wordsworth. The ideas that the poem considers may be Romantic, but the style is that of an earlier day. The diction is antique, the imagery tightly unified, and the sonnet form itself conventionally developed. Lamb’s prosody is pleasant but not novel.

In 1797, Coleridge’s book of poetry went into a second edition, but with an amended title, “. . . to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb.” Lamb had already contributed four poems to the earlier edition, but now there appeared fourteen of his poems. The additional ones are, on the whole, inferior to the initial four; seven are sonnets written about the same time as those that Coleridge had already published. Of interest is one addressed to Mary and written before her tragedy, “If from my lips some angry accents fell.” The closing lines give a sense of the personal nature of these verses:

      Thou to me didst ever shew Kindest affection; and would oft times lend An ear to the desponding love-sick lay, Weeping with sorrows with me, who repay But ill the mighty debt of love I owe, Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.

The other poem of note in this volume was published in a supplement at the end of the edition. Lamb was signaling its inferiority, and his judgment was correct. “A Vision of Repentance” is an experiment in Spenserian stanza. It opens with a vision, “I saw a famous fountain, in my dream.” The fountain turns out to be the waters of redemption that have attracted “Psyche” as well as the speaker. A dialogue between the two ensues, and Psyche reports that she has forsaken Jesus and given “to a treacherous WORLD my heart.” After some further conversation, the speaker leaves Psyche with the wish “Christ restore thee soon.” The poem is one of several by Lamb that deal with Christianity. Like his other religious verse, it is flawed: didactic, prolix, and unrhythmical.

Blank Verse

Lamb’s failure with the Spenserian stanza is paralleled by his experiments in blank verse. In 1798, he and Charles Lloyd published a volume titled Blank Verse . Lacking the direction given by a tight form or a controlling convention, Lamb’s blank verse is verbose, clumsy, and unsure. His autobiographical subject matter and confessional intent are uncomfortably couched in an elevated style reminiscent of John Milton. The two are not compatible. The volume, however, does contain one work by Lamb worthy of his talent.

“The Old Familiar Faces”

“The Old Familiar Faces,” though not in blank verse, is Lamb’s best-known poem. The subject is typical of this period in Lamb’s career; it is a lamenting revelation of intense personal grief and loss. Its power, however, lies not in its subject matter, but in the skillful way in which Lamb manipulates the prosody. The poem evokes humanity’s essential isolation and loneliness in the dolorous tolling repetition of the phrase “All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.”

The form of the poem creates the effect. Rather than blank verse or the thumping rhymed verse of which he was too fond, Lamb chose a three-line stanza that replaced rhyme with the repetition of the title line. In this way, he gained form without the convoluted syntax of the padded line that rhyme often demanded. The rhythm of the line is that used by Coleridge in “Christabel,” and it is agreeable to think that it was Lamb who suggested this meter to his friend.

The poem is justly often anthologized; its rhythm is perfectly suited to the subject. Ian Jack in the Oxford History of English Literature (1963) suggests that the success of the meter conflicts with the other poems in the volume. He concludes, “It is hard to say how far the effect of the poem is due to metrical sophistication, and how far to a felicitous awkwardness.”

By 1800, the self-indulgent moroseness of Lamb’s early verse was beginning to be displaced by a greater sense of reserve and control. These years saw less poetic activity by Lamb, but the poems he wrote are, on the whole, more able. An excellent example of the newfound discipline displayed by Lamb occurs in “Hester.” The poem again deals with the subjects of loss, death, and despair, but he handles them with a new and previously uncharacteristic restraint. The tight rhyme scheme and the concluding hypermetrical iambic dimeter line provide Lamb with a form he uses well: a short line, a varied rhythm, and a regular stanza:

A springy motion in her gait, A rising step, did indicate Of pride and joy no common rate   That flush’d her spirit

“Hester” is not one of the immortal poems in the English language, but it is a solid achievement worthy of a young poet. Ian Jack has compared it favorably with the lyrical ballads of Wordsworth.

“A Farewell to Tobacco”

Another poem from this period breaks the morbidity of Lamb’s previous verse and prefigures the wit and urbanity found in Essays of Elia . Lamb wrote “A Farewell to Tobacco” in what he called “a stammering verse” because he used tobacco to retard his own stammering. Once again he turned to the short line, in this case an irregular eight-syllable trochaic line with rhyming couplets, and it well served his comic intent. Gone is the gross subjectivity; instead, the poem humorously indicts tobacco, while admitting that the habit is unbreakable. Good-natured wordplay and clever burlesque make the poem one of Lamb’s most enjoyable. The comic tone established in “A Farewell to Tobacco” appears again in 1812 when Lamb composed one of his few political poems. “The Triumph of the Whale” gently ridicules the prince regent by comparing George with a leviathan. He satirizes the regent’s girth, appetite, retinue, and failed constancy. The poem exists mainly, however, for the pun on which it ends: “the PRINCE of WHALES.”

“Written at Cambridge”

The last noteworthy poem of this period is a sonnet that illustrates Lamb’s mature, relaxed, and personal style. “Written at Cambridge” is an autobiographical whimsy that details how the poet feels as he walks around the university. A note of disappointment begins the poem because the speaker regrets that he had been unable to attend such an institution. This sense of loss disappears, however, with the speaker’s slightly foolish but nevertheless touching portrait of his imaginative usurpation of Cantabrigian wisdom while strolling its grounds. This poem is worthy of “gentle Charles.”

The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb

Of the original poems published in the posthumous collection The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb , almost half are from his last period, 1820 to 1834. Most of these are “album verse,” a popular form in the 1820’s. These occasional verses—written at the request of and about the album’s owner—are humorous and light, built around epigrams, puns, and acrostics. Most of this album verse, while representative of the genre, is hardly memorable, with two exceptions. “On the Arrival in England of Lord Byron’s Remains” is a good example of Lamb’s mature tone, and it reveals his opinion of Lord Byron: “lordly Juan, damned to lasting fame,/ Went out a pickle, and came back the same.” A more serious work that arrives at unpleasant conclusions is “In My Own Album,” a poignant comparison of life to an album. The poem returns to the theme of self-reproach that colored so much of Lamb’s early verse, but there exists a distance and a universality that was not at work before. Rhymed tercets provide Lamb the form in which he worked best, and his iambic hexameters are smooth and graceful. The music of his verse complements his rhythm and meter.

“On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born”

Two of Lamb’s best poems, both products of this late period, nicely exemplify his mature serious and comic styles. Both were written after Lamb had won recognition as an essayist, when he no longer felt he had to prove himself as a poet. Freed from the necessity of competing with Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and Milton (not to mention Coleridge, Robert Burns, and Robert Southey), Lamb discovered his own rhythm and voice. These, his finest verses, are the products of his natural strengths, and not those borrowed from another time or another artist. Relaxed and self-assured, Lamb mastered the short line and the comic effect of rhyme. He cultivated forms that worked for him and his voice. “On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born” deals with loss and death in a poignant and moving way. The maudlin, pathetic tone is gone. In its place is an elegant lament for the state of all humans, an elegy that transcends the single occasion, a threnody whose language and figures are worthy of Andrew Marvell or Henry Vaughan. The dead child, addressed as “Riddle of destiny,” presents to the speaker an insoluble problem, the suffering of innocent people. The speaker concludes that “the economy of Heaven is dark” and that even the “wisest clerks” are unable to explain why an infant dies while

    shrivel’d crones Stiffen with age to stocks and stones; And crabbed use the conscience sears In sinners of an hundred years.

The poem closes with a traditional, but guarded, optimism.

Satan in Search of a Wife

Lamb’s longest and last poem published during his life, Satan in Search of a Wife (1831), consists of two books of thirty verses each. It is usually said that Lamb never valued this poem because he wrote his publisher not to mention that the “damn’d ’Devil’s Wedding’” was written by the author of the Essays of Elia . Nevertheless, he thought highly enough of the poem to have it published. The ballad is Lamb at his best: light, jocular, ironic, punning, occasional, and personal. It begins with an echo of Lord Byron’s The Vision of Judgment (1822) in reverse. Instead of Saint Peter grown bored, the devil is out of sorts:

The Devil was sick and queasy of late,  And his sleep and his appetite fail’d him; His ears they hung down and his tail it was clapp’d Between his poor hoofs, like a dog that’s been rapp’d—  None knew what the devil ail’d him.

The tale continues, telling of the Devil’s love for a tailor’s daughter, his successful wooing of her, and the joyful wedding. Lamb’s autobiographical propensity shows up even here, for lurking behind all the fun are serious complaints about bachelorhood, about women as lovers, women as mothers, and even women who murder, with the speaker concluding that “a living Fiend/ Was better than a dead Parent.” The poem is, however, anything but maudlin. It is an energetic and fancy-filled romp that spoofs the devil, marriage, foreigners, and the Christian idea of Hell. It is vintage Lamb: genteel, a bit cynical, but kind and sincere. The essays of Lamb will continue to earn him fame, but poems such as Satan in Search of a Wife have been too long neglected.

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"Charles Lamb - Analysis." British and Irish Poetry, Revised Edition, edited by Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman, eNotes.com, Inc., 2011, 15 Aug. 2024 <https://www.enotes.com/topics/charles-lamb/critical-essays#critical-essays-analysis>

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Charles Lamb: Biography, literary works and style.

About Charles Lamb, his works and style.

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 The aim of this study is to place the writings of Charles Lamb in the context of his age. His work is assessed in relation to that of his friends and contemporaries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats and Hazlitt, in order to ascertain how far he shared their characteristic preoccu- pations. Because of its central significance in the writings of the early English Romantics, and its problem- atic role in Lamb&#39;s own works, the concept of the imagination is employed as an unifying theme for this investigation. The introduction summarizes the history of Lamb r s reputation, and details in particular the fluctuations in critical opinion on the question of whether or not he can be considered a Romantic. In chapter one, Lamb&#39;s early relationship with Coleridge is described and its effects upon his imaginative development analyzed. The second chapter concerns itself with the damnation imagery rife throughout Lamb&#39;s work; what he makes of the theme is compared with its use in other c...

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The Romantic period was a time in which prose writing witnessed a rapid development. Writers such as Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt changed the styles and topics of the eighteenth-century essay. They also created new forms of writing in which their personal impressions and the subjects of everyday life were central. But the best-known essayist of the 1820s was Charles Lamb. His essays gave him a very high reputation. The element of his self-reflection in his essays gave a personal touch to the readers that they took him to their hearts. This paper explores the literary essays and various elements that made his autobiographical aspect visible and tangible to the readers.

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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. Pathos and humour frequently jostle each other in his essays. There is a curious mingling of these two ingredients in his work. Laughter is quickly followed by tears of sympathy in many of his essays. Sometimes there are alternations of humour and pathos, and sometimes the two elements exist simultaneously in the same passage which has both a comic and a pathetic side. Charles Lamb is widely known as the master of personal essays of which Montaigne is the greatest exponent. His essays are composed in Essays of Elia and Last essays of Elia. His essays are marked by self-revelation, humour and pathos and a conversational manner. Lamb delights the reader with his personal details, genial humour, gracious personality and pleasant inclination. His scale of subject matter is astonishingly different. The inventive insights of Lamb's personal essays obtain its critical and innovative impulse uniformly from these traditions which superimpose in the comprehensive diversities of English essays. Lamb's essays are actually social criticisms which oppose; and even subvert the social and cultural configurations that restrain the preferences of individuals. As the narrator he puts in formidable management to oppose the hierarchical structures that interfere with individual freedom. The essay as a literary context resists the inquiry of times and the critical sensibilities of generations. In the romantic epoch, the principle of individualism and creative consideration acquire strengthened in the class of personal essay like Essays of Elia by Lamb. In these essays the centre platform is held by the various shades of the essayist's self-reflective subjectivities which establish a thorough record of memories, emotions, embarrassment and imaginations. Lamb assumes the role of a commentator and narrator in his essays. His narratives blend pictures of self and others in realistic condition. His essays portray a projection of his own self which is amiable and friendly. He attracts his readers by creating a confidential manner in his essays which as a matter of fact functions like a discourse between the essayist and his readers. The experience is theatrical in which Lamb's personality is dramatized through various means and revealed to the readers. His essays are the

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The Style of Charles Lamb in His Essay

Style of Charles Lamb in his essay 

The style of Charles Lamb is so peculiarly of his own that it is difficult to analyse it. It is the result of his study of a wide range of English writers, odd, out-of-the-way writings as he has confessed in one of his writings, were his favourite – study and these influenced his style. As a result, his style has often a curious and old-world atmosphere.

He generally avoids the trick and colour of modern prose, as he says, he “wrote for anything”. His style often smacks of the seventeenth century prose-writers like Brown, Burton, Fuller, Jeremy Taylor and Walton.

The Elizabethan traits in his style show themselves in his love for word-coining, his fondness for Alliteration, his use of compound words, his formation of adjectives from proper names, his frequent use of Latinisms. Thus, his style is a happily achieved ‘conglomeration’. It is a conglomeration of many a style but at the same time, it has a distinct, individualistic flavour which has been called ‘Lambian’. 

Among all the English essayists, Charles Lamb (1775 – 1834) occupies a conspicuous position and he is a great romantic literary essayist. As an essayist, it is Lamb’s glory that he brought back the subjective note which was disappeared from the essay since the days of Montaigne, its inventor. The essays of Charles Lamb are deeply pervaded by his personality.

It is the man Charles Lamb who contributes the enduring charm in his essays. Thus, in a sense, he is the most egoistical of all the essayists. But there is nothing vulgar or morbid in his egoism. He takes the reader into his inner circle as his friends, and tells them everything about his life with frankness.

Except his insanity on which he is silent, all the minute details of his inner and outer life have been put down in his essays with such an air of confidence that the reader takes interest in them. Thus, the essay has been used by him as the instrument of constant self revelation. Like Montaigne, he might have said, “I speak into paper as into the first man”. 

For instance, in “Dream Children: A Reverie” Lamb takes his readers into intimate confidence and unhesitatingly tells them, here he often visits his grandmother’s house at Norfolk in vacations, how he spent his time there, in the big garden and in the solitary mansion.

He has also described nicely in his essay his grandmother Mrs. Field, his elder brother, John Lamb and also his Lady love, Alice Winterton (Ann Simmons). The essay has also spoken of his two dream children, John and Alice. They are the children of his dream, and not the real children. In fact, Lamb was a life-long bachelor but he loved a young girl, Ann Simmons. Thus his essay is intensely autobiographical. 

Another great charm of his essays is his rich and inimitable humour. This humour as Walter Pater has put it in his essay on Charles Lamb, is the “laughter which blends with tears”. In “Dream Children: A Reverie”, Lamb’s humour and pathos are blended with superb artistry.

Little Alice’s involuntary movement of her feet at the mention of Mrs. Field’s fine dance, Alice’s spontaneous spreading of her hands at the mention of Mrs Field’s wonderful memorisation of the Psalms of the Bible, John’s looking courageous at the mention of the ghost’s story are the delicate examples of humorous touches in his essays.

The humour is always characterised by geniality, lovingness and pleasing sensation. Nowhere there is satire on them. Occasional touches of humour also light up the pages by such playful terms of expressions as found in “The Superannuated Man” like “desk-fellows”, “co-brethren of the quill”, “the superannuated simpleton”, “retired leasure” etc. 

And side by side, there is deep pathos inseparable from Lamb’s style. “Had I a little son, I would christen him; nothing to do: he should do nothing”. “Homour with him is never far from tragedy”, says Compton Rickett, “through his tears you may see the rainbow in the sky”. For instance, we may refer to the lines where his two dream children say to him, “We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all.

The children of Alice call Bartrum father. We are nothing, less than nothing and dreams. We are only what might have been and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence and a name”. 

Lamb’s fondness for Latin quotation is also seen in the essay,  “The Superannuated Man” in such expression as “Esto perpetua” etc. But how befitting they are in the proper context that we do not experience any difficulty to understand them. 

Another great feature of Lamb’s essays is his fine imaginative quality. He is essentially a poet with imaginative vision of a poet. His eyes penetrate beneath the common things and find there in the beauty and romance which other minds pass by. 

In A.C Benson’s words “the strength of Lamb’s essay lies in the fact that he condescends to use the very commonest thing and he transfigures the simplest experiences with a fairy like delicacy and romantic glow”.

Thus, in “Dream Children” Lamb finely describes the idiosyncrasies of the children and various other things relating to Mrs. Field, John Lamb, Alice Winterton and himself colouring them with his charming personality and graceful imagination. His prose is at places, full of the fine flavour of poetry. For example, “We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all”. Such lines we can never forget and Lamb leaves, indeed, a great influence as an essayist on his posterity. 

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Uploaded by [email protected] on March 20, 2007

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