Charles Lamb

The last essays of Elia Charles Lamb

The essays Charles Lamb wrote for London Magazine in the early 1820's, which were collected in the Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia, mark the acme of his literary achievement and are an enduring and loved contribution to English letters. Lamb had written familiar essays since 1802. After "The Londoner" appeared in the Morning Post (February 1, 1802), Thomas Manning wrote to him to express admiration for the piece, adding, "If you were to write a volume of essays in the same stile you might be sure of its succeeding." Although Lamb did not immediately take Manning's advice, he did over the next sixteen years produce other periodical essays, volumes of criticism, books for children, and a farce. In 1818, his collected works appeared in two volumes. Then in 1820, John Scott, the editor of the newly established London Magazine, asked Lamb to contribute. Lamb's "Recollections of the South Sea House" appeared in the August issue, the first of the essays written under the pseudonym "Elia." Most of the fifty-three items collected in the two volumes of Elia essays were written for the London Magazine between 1820 and 1823, though the last piece in the second volume, "Popular Fallacies," appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in 1826 (January-June, September).