The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6: Letters 1821-1842
Charles Lamb's letters are not mere correspondence, they are essays in disguise, crafted with the same wit and humanity that made his Elia essays immortal. This volume spans his final two decades, from 1821 to his death in 1834, offering an unfiltered portrait of one of English literature's most beloved stylists. Here he jokes with Wordsworth about the weather, confides in Coleridge about his dark moods, and writes to friends with a self-deprecating charm that feels startlingly modern. The letters reveal everything: the books he devoured, the plays he reviewed, the poverty he endured with dry humor, and his fierce devotion to his sister Mary. These are not the polished performances of a literary figure at work. They are the voice of a man who made genius from everyday life, and who happened to write the most readable letters in the English language. For anyone who has loved Lamb's essays, or who wants to understand the private lives behind the Romantic era's public monuments, this volume is a quiet revelation.
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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
