Carnero

Works of Charles Lamb.Volumes I II III IV V & VI.

1886ref. FB642 (1 to 6) /4ANavy calf spine and corners blue marbled boards. Gilt banding titles and emblems on spine. A superb set Charles Lamb 10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834 was an English essayist poet and antiquarian best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare co-authored with his sister Mary Lamb 1764–1847. Friends with such literary luminaries as Samuel Taylor Coleridge Robert Southey William Wordsworth and William Hazlitt Lamb was at the centre of a major literary circle in England. He has been referred to by E. V. Lucas his principal biographer as "the most lovable figure in English literature". Lamb's first publication was the inclusion of four sonnets in Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects published in 1796 by Joseph Cottle. The sonnets were significantly influenced by the poems of Burns and the sonnets of William Bowles a largely forgotten poet of the late 18th century. Lamb's poems garnered little attention and are seldom read today. As he himself came to realise he was a much more talented prose stylist than poet. Indeed one of the most celebrated poets of the day—William Wordsworth—wrote to John Scott as early as 1815 that Lamb "writes prose exquisitely"—and this was five years before Lamb began The Essays of Elia for which he is now most famous. Notwithstanding Lamb's contributions to Coleridge's second edition of the Poems on Various Subjects showed significant growth as a poet. These poems included The Tomb of Douglas and A Vision of Repentance. Because of a temporary falling out with Coleridge Lamb's poems were to be excluded in the third edition of the Poems though as it turned out a third edition never emerged. Instead Coleridge's next publication was the monumentally influential Lyrical Ballads co-published with Wordsworth. Lamb on the other hand published a book entitled Blank Verse with Charles Lloyd the mentally unstable son of the founder of Lloyds Bank. Lamb's most famous poem was written at this time and entitled The Old Familiar Faces. Like most of Lamb's poems it is unabashedly sentimental and perhaps for this reason it is still remembered and widely read today being often included in anthologies of British and Romantic period poetry. Of particular interest to Lambarians is the opening verse of the original version of The Old Familiar Faces which is concerned with Lamb's mother whom Mary Lamb killed. It was a verse that Lamb chose to remove from the edition of his Collected Work published in 1818: I had a mother but she died and left me Died prematurely in a day of horrors – All all are gone the old familiar faces. In the final years of the 18th century Lamb began to work on prose first in a novella entitled Rosamund Gray which tells the story of a young girl whose character is thought to be based on Ann Simmons an early love interest. Although the story is not particularly successful as a narrative because of Lamb's poor sense of plot it was well thought of by Lamb's contemporaries and led Shelley to observe "what a lovely thing is Rosamund Gray! How much knowledge of the sweetest part of our nature in it!" Quoted in Barnett page 50 In the first years of the 19th century Lamb began a fruitful literary cooperation with his sister Mary. Together they wrote at least three books for William Godwin's Juvenile Library. The most successful of these was Tales From Shakespeare which ran through two editions for Godwin and has been published dozens of times in countless editions ever since. The book contains artful prose summaries of some of Shakespeare's most well-loved works. According to Lamb he worked primarily on Shakespeare's tragedies while Mary focused mainly on the comedies. Lamb's essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered with Reference to their Fitness for Stage Representation" which was originally published in the Reflector in 1811 with the title "On Garrick and Acting; and the Plays of Shakspeare considered with reference to their fitness for Stage Representation" has often been taken as the ultimate Romantic dismissal of the theatre. In the essay Lamb argues that Shakespeare should be read rather than performed in order to protect Shakespeare from butchering by mass commercial performances. While the essay certainly criticises contemporary stage practice it also develops a more complex reflection on the possibility of representing Shakespearean dramas: Shakespeare's dramas are for Lamb the object of a complex cognitive process that does not require sensible data but only imaginative elements that are suggestively elicited by words. In the altered state of consciousness that the dreamlike experience of reading stands for Lamb can see Shakespeare's own conceptions mentally materialized. Besides contributing to Shakespeare's reception with his and his sister's book Tales From Shakespeare Lamb also contributed to the recovery of acquaintance with Shakespeare's contemporaries. Accelerating the increasing interest of the time in the older writers and building for himself a reputation as an antiquarian in 1808 Lamb compiled a collection of extracts from the old dramatists Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare. This also contained critical "characters" of the old writers which added to the flow of significant literary criticism primarily of Shakespeare and his contemporaries from Lamb's pen. Immersion in seventeenth-century authors such as Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne also changed the way Lamb wrote adding a distinct flavour to his writing style. Lamb's friend the essayist William Hazlitt thus characterised him: "Mr. Lamb . does not march boldly along with the crowd . He prefers bye-ways to highways. When the full tide of human life pours along to some festive show to some pageant of a day Elia would stand on one side to look over an old bookstall or stroll down some deserted pathway in search of a pensive description over a tottering doorway or some quaint device in architecture illustrative of embryo art and ancient manners. Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an antiquarian ." Although he did not write his first Elia essay until 1820 Lamb's gradual perfection of the essay form for which he eventually became famous began as early as 1811 in a series of open letters to Leigh Hunt's Reflector. The most famous of these early essays is "The Londoner" in which Lamb famously derides the contemporary fascination with nature and the countryside. He would continue to fine-tune his craft experimenting with different essayistic voices and personae for the better part of the next quarter century. John Slark. hardcover

Martin Frost · Reino Unido197,00 GBP≈ 235,29 €

Carnero

Siglo

Lenguaje

País del librero

Fotos

Añadido

Temas

Catálogos

Siglo

Lenguaje

País del librero

Fotos

Añadido

Temas

Catálogos

Siglo

Lenguaje

País del librero

Fotos

Añadido

Temas

Catálogos