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.
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