Charles Lamb

(1775 - 1834)

Charles Lamb began writing personal and critical essays for London Magazine under a pseudonym in 1820, collecting the works into the books Elia in 1823 and The Last Essays of Elia in 1833. He wrote to his friend William Wordsworth in 1801, “Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don’t much care if I never see a mountain in my life.” Twenty-nine years later, he wrote to the same correspondent, “What have I gained by health? Intolerable dullness. What by early hours and moderate meals?—a total blank.”