Charles Lamb and the Rattle of Existence

Abstract

The precise number of Lamb’s extant letters is still to be established but it is large enough to suggest that for him letter-writing was a regular and habitual practice. Even more than his essays, his letters have been critically neglected, or ignored, or dismissed as damagingly bellelettristic. Yet they constitute a suggestive and impressive body of work and show once more that Lamb’s literary reputation requires urgent re-examination (as a few recent studies have happily, if belatedly, demonstrated) and that he should be approached as a writer who (in spite of the jokes and sportive sallies) deserves to be taken seriously. In working our way towards this new reading we need to acknowledge that more than one previous approach to Lamb was quite properly driven by the sense that he was a writer of recognizable, if puzzling, stature; but we can now understand more fully the contexts which helped to generate his work and, in particular, the frames of thinking (psychological, political, sociological and literary) which informed Romantic writing, especially of the first generation. At last, we find ourselves in a position to appraise the significance of Lamb’s letters, not as a decorative extra or a biographical supplement (in spite of their valuable biographical resonances and whatever insights they might provide into Lamb’s character), but as a sustained and original contribution to literature, which increasingly demands to be recognized in its own right. Lamb also gives vivid expression to an urban perspective which makes a vital alternative to more received poetics, but is still only beginning to be acknowledged.