Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0877458510, Paperback)

Charles Lamb, one of the most engaging personal essayists of all time, began publishing his unforgettable, entertaining Elia essays in the London Magazine in 1820; they were so immediately popular that a book-length collection was published in 1823. Inventing the persona of “Elia” allowed Lamb to be shockingly honest and to gain a playful distance for self-examination. The resulting essays touch upon a wide range of compelling subjects from the deliciously humorous “Dissertation upon Roast Pig” to the poignantly reflective “New Year's Eve.” Yet collectively they also comprise a fascinating personal memoir, veiled under the pseudonymous disguise of Elia. Now back in print with a new foreword by the distinguished personal essayist Phillip Lopate and with useful annotations, Essays of Elia will provide a delicious stylistic treat for all readers.

Reproducing Lamb's original edition for the first time since its publication in 1823, this facsimile begins with “The South-Sea House” and ends with “On the Acting of Munden” from the first series of twenty-eight essays, which range in tone from slyly humorous to compassionately wise; it also includes “By a Friend of the Late Elia,” which Lamb wrote in 1823 and later used as a preface to the 1833 edition. Psychologically and verbally brilliant, teeming with fascinating portraits, lively stories, and a dazzling prose style, Lamb's inspired essays are the work of an unparalleled genius whose profound influence has been acknowledged by essayists as different as E. B. White and Virginia Woolf.