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Charles Lamb’s Essays

Charles Lamb wore many hats as a writer, dedicating his early career to
poetry and writing a well known adaptation of Shakespeare's plays for
children entitled Tales from Shakespeare. But as an individual writer,
Lamb is arguably best known for his contributions to the essay form.
Lamb wrote his essays a little over 200 years after the 1580 publication
of Michel de Montaigne's Essays, which set the template for the essay as
we know it today. As a Romantic, Lamb brought a key innovation to the
somewhat new form, inserting his own personally to give the essays a
conversational tone.

Lamb's essays showcase his passions and anxieties, imbuing the non-
fiction form with a personal and literary dimension. For that matter,
many of his essays toe the line between fiction and non-fiction, using the
devices of dream or slowly revealed deceit to make readers question the
veracity of what they are reading. In Lamb's essays, this move serves a
dual function, both helping remind the reader of the author's humanity,
and adding a dose of excitement to a type of writing which can feel stuffy
and blandly philosophical.

Both the collections Elia and The Last Essay of Elia see Lamb writing
under the Elia persona, named after a man he worked with at the South
Sea House. The persona of Elia is not a rigid one, and Lamb takes
creative liberties when writing through this identity. Sometimes Elia's
narration is rambling and digressive, other times it is cogent and
incisive. The subject matter is sprawling and tone is varied, with Lamb
using Elia to write about everything from people he admires to the origin
of cooking to his loathing for newspapers.

Seemingly, the Elia character gave Lamb permission to fictionalize his

life just enough for him to feel comfortable writing about it. While we
have little reason to believe many of the facts are fabricated in these
essays (aside from the facts Lamb tells us are fabricated), Lamb choosing
a pseudonym for himself meant that he could assign pseudonyms to
others in his life, and shift their relationship to himself ever so slightly to
better fit an essay's purpose. Hence, when he talks about this brother
John in "Dream-Children; A Reverie," he could say that John died,
instead of having to remark on their real-life estrangement. The creative
license taken there better serves the essay about Lamb's fantasy life,
helping him explore the maze of dream life without getting too bogged
down in grim reality.
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The Characters in the Essay

Elia
Charles Lamb's narratorial persona is named Elia, after a coworker at the
South Sea House. While Lamb and Elia are effectively the "same" person,
as the former writes about his own life and musings through the latter, the
persona's voice and style vary greatly across all of Lamb's essays.
Sometimes Elia's attitude and voice are whimsical; other times they are
irreverent, or polemical, or quite sad. The Elia persona evolves from essay
to essay.
Cousin Bridget
Whenever Lamb writes of Cousin Bridget, he is alluding to his sister, Mary.
Although she doesn't always figure prominently in his essays, Lamb often
attributes a story or thought to her. In real life, Mary was the closest person
to Charles, and she played a prominent role in his writing career even if she
wasn't a fixture in those writings.
John L.
Mentioned as Elia's older brother in "Dream-Children; A Reverie," John L.
is portrayed as a heroic older brother who gave the young Elia support that
Elia never reciprocated. Elia mourns his death, and bemoans his own
shortcomings. In real life, Charles's brother John could not have been dead
at the time of this essay's writing, but he was estranged from Charles
because of family disputes.
Alice
Elia's unrequited love interest is a woman named Alice, who we see
mentioned a few times throughout his essays. She appears as the fantasy
mother of Elia's fantasy children in "Dream-Children; A Reverie," and
appears in Lamb's "A Chapter on Ears" as well. The character Alice is based
on a girl named Ann Simmons, who also figured in several of his sonnets.
Field
Elia's grandmother in "Dream-Children; A Reverie," Field is described as a
major influence on the young writer and one of his favorite figures from
childhood. But she also embodies several good qualities which the narrator
clearly believes he lacks, such as good faith in God, magnanimity, and
casual fearlessness. Through the characterization of Field, we learn of our
narrator's own supposed shortcomings.
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LITERARY ANALYSIS
Charles Lamb, the shining star in the sky of essay writing, was born on
February 10, 1775. He is the world predominant a renown English poet,
essayist and antiquarian. His essays are considered to be the finest among
the English prose work. He is appreciated for his genial humor, humanity,
wisdom and profound pathos that is reflected in his writings. Essays of
Elia was the first volume of his essays that was published in 1828 while the
second volume of his essays, named, The Last Essays of Elia was published
in 1833. His essays have a unique combination of wit, reflection, anecdote,
and fancy. He died on December 27, 1834.
The essay “Dream Children” is a narrative essay in which the author,
Charles Lamb narrates the story of his dream that he had. In this dream, he
came across his dream children that diminish at the end of the dream.
This essay exhibits the subjects of pain and guilt of getting deprived of the
people whom we loved from the core of our heart. In this essay, the author
is brought in a dream world to reveal the sweet recollections of the past
days. The essay, being enhanced with despair, clarifies the worth and
necessity of childhood and the loved ones for an individual, without whom
the life appears to be dark and suffocating for the individual.
The reaction and response the children in the essay reflect the effect of the
story on their mind and turns the essay dramatic. Moreover, their actions
were proof that the story that has been narrated to then have a great
influence on them and were moved by their father’s description.
There is a shift in the tone of the essay at various points. The shifts in the
tone, from humorous to tragic, occurred when the author describes the
scene of his grandmother and beloved brother death. Lamb appears to be
nostalgic throughout the essay and longed for his loved ones. He is
depressed at the death of his beloved Alice and feels guilty for not marrying
her.
Towards the end of the essay, a twist in the essay comes when all the events
in the story turn out to be a dream. This adds suspense to the essay along
with an open end.
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Themes
The Imagination
Many of Lamb's essays revolve around imaginative conceits, and the world
that Lamb describes is most easily understood through his wild
imagination. This plays out in novel fantasies such as the days of the month
partying together and a boy eating a pig burnt by a house fire, as well as in
the fabrications of something similar to Lamb's own life, such as the made
up workers in the South Sea House or his fictive children in "Dream-
Children; A Reverie." The innovation that Lamb brought to the essay was
this very sense of the imagination, helping expand the form from its
philosophical roots.
Kinship
We know from Lamb's biography that he was particularly close to his sister
Mary, and we can glean from these essays that he gave primacy to his
family relationships. Whether it's the conversation with Cousin Bridget in
"Old China" or the tales told in "Dream-Children; A Reverie," Lamb likes to
demonstrate the influence of the people close to him. Yet that sense of
kinship is not limited to his family. Rather, it's an attitude that extends to
many of the subjects of his essays, be it friends like Elliston and James
White, his beloved hero John Milton, or the chimney sweeper who laughs
at him for slipping on ice. While Lamb is a proponent of solitary reading,
he is constantly advocating for a life lived with others.
Storytelling
While essays are non-fiction, Lamb uses the theme of storytelling to push
the boundaries of the form, often dabbling in fiction. For instance, his
stories of the tea ceremony depicted on a piece of China and the various
pork-related stories in "A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig" serve to conjure
fictional histories. There are also the stories he tells of the people he loves,
or the stories he relays from friends. In all of these, Lamb expands the
typical boundaries of the essay form, creating rich, human, and
consummately living prose.
Memory and Nostalgia
Lamb is nothing if not a nostalgist, and so many of his essays are rooted in
recalling something from the past. Sometimes this is painful stuff, such as
his rejection by his unrequited love Alice. But in the chimney sweepers,
Lamb sees something of himself as a boy, and in the story about James
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White throwing them a banquet, he's fondly remembering both a person

and and event that are history. He loves old china specifically because it
bears some marks of a past, showing that Lamb's nostalgia is not for a
specific time or state of affairs, but more broadly a yearning and affection
for past times.

Symbols
The Dream Children (Allegory)
In "Dream-Children; A Reverie," Elia recounts stories of his family to his
children, who vanish when he starts talking about their mother. The
account is a kind of allegory for loneliness, as Elia's children literally
disappear from him when he begins to remember that his chance at
having a wife and kids was lost. Only in a dream does Elia have children
to regale with stories, and in life, he has just himself.

Imagery
Children Growing Fainter
In "Dream-Children; A Reverie" we get the affecting image of Elia's
children fading away as he begins to realize that he did not marry Alice
W. and therefore had no children by her. Their fading from Elia's vision
helps us understand his pain of having these lovely children so within his
grasp only to disappear upon waking.