Elia. Essays which have appeared under that signature in the London Magazine

by [LAMB, Charles (1775-1834)]

Price: $2,450.00
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Book description: London: [printed by Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, Fleet Street, 1823. 8vo. (7 5/8 x 4 5/8 inches). 6pp. publisher's advertisements at rear. Original drab paper-covered boards, paper label to backstrip, uncut (some expert repair). [With:] [Charles LAMB]. The Last Essays of Elia. London: [printed by Bradbury & Evans for] Edward Moxon, 1833. 8vo. (7 7/8 x 4 3/4 inches). Half-title, 4pp. publisher's advertisements at the back. Original dark blue moire cloth-backed drab paper-covered boards, paper label to spine (slight wear to spine label). The two works in 2 vols. Each within later matching red cloth chemise and individual red morocco slip-cases by Rivière & Son, lettered in gilt on the "spines". Provenance: J.H. Smith (contemporary signature on front free endpaper of second work); Moncure Biddle (armorial bookplate in each work, sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, 1952, lot 601). The very fine Moncure Biddle set of Lamb's two best known works. E.V. Lucas considered that Lamb ranked with the greatest essayists of the 17th and 18th centuries. First edition, first issue of both works: the first with the single address for the publisher's on the title page and 6pp. of advertisements; the second with the half-title and 4pp. of advertisements. "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. He had an extreme ... 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 reflexion 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." (E.V. Lucas writing in The Encylopedia Britannica [1911], vol.XVI, p. 105). Ashley III, pp.50 & 53; Grolier One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature 75; Roff 149, 185; Stirling 572 & 575.

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