Charles Lamb was an English writer and essayist, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, which he produced with his sister, Mary Lamb.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

Excerpt from The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 6: Letters, 1796-1820 Owing to the curious operations of the law of copyright, it will not for at least forty-two years be possible for any one edition of Lamb's correspondence to contain all the letters. To-day, in order to possess a set complete down to the present time, one must purchase at least nine, and possibly more, works, amounting to many volumes - among them Cha/rles Lamb and the Lloyds, of which I was the editor, but which I am debarred from using. It is in order, to some extent, to meet the difficulty thus set up, and to cover the whole ground of the correspondence, that I have in the notes drawn attention to every important letter distributed over these many other volumes. I am, however, perfectly aware that only for a brief period will this list be exhaustive, since new letters continually come to light, while there are, I understand, at this moment in private collections in America many letters that have not yet been printed, forty - two years' copyright in which may date from the day they are published - for the benefit not of any descendants of the Lambs (for they left none) but of those who happen to possess them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

All of the available letters of Charles Lamb, a master of the English essay, and his sister Mary Anne published in this definitive, scrupulously edited work. The letters, many of them written to illustrious figures of the Romantic period, are generally agreed to rank among the finest in the English language. Transcribing where possible from the originals or facsimiles, Professor Marrs corrects textual errors found in previous editions, and he pays particular attention to establishing precise dates for the correspondence. He includes letters that were omitted from the last collection (published in 1935 and long out of print), and he has uncovered more than eighty letters never published before. The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb totals five or six volumes, and presents nearly 1200 letters written by Charles and Mary, singly or together. The correspondence is fully annotated, the volumes are illustrated, and the holographic idiosyncrasies of the originals are rendered typographically wherever possible. Rich in revelations about the extraordinary lives of the Lambs, these beautifully written letters are an inexhaustible store of information about the Romantic era and its major figures-Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge. The publication of unexpurgated and authoritative texts is an important literary event. The first volume was published in 1975, the bicentenary of Charles Lamb's birth. It contains 102 letters written by Charles, many of them after Mary murdered their mother. Among the recipients were the poets Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth. The letters provide shrewd observations on his friends' writings and his own, vivid descriptions of life in London, and compassionate but candid remarks concerning his family and acquaintances. Notes to each letter place it in context, quoting where necessary from the correspondence Lamb is answering. Volume I includes Professor Marrs's extensive Introduction to the entire collection. After supplying a biography of the Lamb family up to the murder, he treats Mary's and Charles's life together until Charles's death, tracing through the letters a relationship that remained warm and affectionate even under the shadow of Mary's insanity. Professor Marrs also gives the publishing history of the letters and sets forth the principles upon which his edition is based.