For me the best of all essayists in English, surpassing even Johnson and De Quincey. But to reduce this merely to a book of essays misses, I think, the essential strangeness of the project, one which slyly grapples with fictions and imposture and the nature (or existence) of personal truths while re

My copy was printed in 1898 and was super cheap on ebay. And whenever I read this book I love holding it in my hands and thinking about how old it is and how sweet and funny it can be even now. I tracked this down because of "Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" - it's the book that 2 mai

The peaks of these essays are exceptionally high, but one gets one's fair share of plateaus and depths. Elia is at his best when he plays with you. This is in evidence in such classics as 'The South-Sea House' and 'Dream-Children'. 'Mackery End' strikes me as one of the most beautiful and heartbreak

"I can rise at the Chapel Bell, and dream that it rings for me." —Oxford in the Vacation

"What a place to be in is an old library! . . . I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding sheets . . . I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage, and the odour of their old moth

Re-reading Lamb’s essays, I bow yet again to the man’s unimprovable genius for words. This is some of the very best English, and these are some of the very best essays, you will ever read. The man’s life, too… If I had my way we’d be calling him “Saint Charles Lamb.”

Really enjoyed it. Anne Fadiman put me onto his trail...more

Sometimes I get used to finding literary corners thoroughly well-colonised on goodreads and feel surprised when I find one that is less so, as with this. Anyway, I loved this. It's certainly journalism; the mode is primarily riffs on a superficial theme. Lamb might be a little too affected for some