The Life Of Charles Lamb V1 (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

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Excerpt from The Life of Charles Lamb, Vol. 1 of 2

This is, I think, the first attempt that has been made since Talfourd's day to write the life of Charles and Mary Lamb in full. The charming volume contributed by the late Canon Ainger to the "English Men of Letters" series was rather in the nature of a monograph than a biography; and the same may be said of Barry Lamb in the "Eminent Women" series. Mr. Percy Fitzggerald's Charles Lamb: His Friends, his Haunts, and his Books and In the Footprints of Charles Lamb, by Mr. B. E. Martin, and American writer, were constructed on an easier plan; the admirably concentrated biographical introduction by Mr. William Macdonald, in his edition of Lamb's works, is critical before all things; while Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt's Mary and Charles Lamb and The Lambs, and Mr. Bertram Dobell's Sidelights on Charles Lamb - all invaluable to workers in the same field - do not aim at completeness.

The new material that has come to light since the publication of Talfourd's Final Memorials alone would justify a new biography, apart from the removal, by the lapse of time, of many of the restrictions which prevented Lamb's first biographer from quoting as freely from the letters as he might have wished, and from entering fully into all particulars of his friend's life and friendships.