The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1miscellaneous Prose
1912
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 1miscellaneous Prose
1912
Charles and Mary Lamb's miscellaneous prose reveals the tender heart of English Romanticism. The collection centers on "Rosamund Gray," a poignant tale of a young woman and her blind grandmother navigating loss and love in provincial England, their quiet lives illuminated by unexpected connection with the earnest young Allan Clare. These essays and character sketches pulse with the Lambs' distinctive sensibility: a delicate attention to the small griefs and quiet joys that define human experience, rendered in prose that moves between melancholy and gentle humor. Beyond the sentimental narrative, Lamb proves himself a master of the personal essay, offering literary portraits and observations that anticipate the intimate, conversational tone that would later define the form. Here is writing that lingers in the spaces between dramatic action, finding significance in a grandmother's tenderness, a lost parent's memory, and the fragile communities formed by lonely hearts. For readers who savor the English essay at its most reflective, this volume preserves a literary voice both intimate and lasting.
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“A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.””
— Charles Lamb
“Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.””
— Charles Lamb
“I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty other occasions in the course of the day besides my dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, or a solved problem. Why have none for books, those spiritual repasts - a grace before Milton - a grace before Shakespeare - a devotional exercise proper to be said before reading the Fairy Queen?””
— Charles Lamb
“Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimaeras”
— Charles Lamb
“The inventor of [this saying, 'That Enough Is As Good As a Feast'] did not believe it himself....Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time to himself, are not”
— Charles Lamb
“Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. … I was present not long since at a party of North Britons, where a son of Burns was expected ; and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way), that I wished it were the father instead of the son”
— Charles Lamb
“I am sentimentally disposed to harmony but organically incapable of tune.””
— Charles Lamb
“I don't envy the mule his labyrinthine inlets, those indispensable side-intelligencers.””
— Charles Lamb
“On these little visual interpretations [Valentine's Day cards], no emblem is so common as the heart,”
— Charles Lamb
