THE LIFE AND WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB

Boston: R. H. Hinckley Company, [ca. 1900]. Edmonton Edition. No. 56 OF 100 COPIES on Japanese vellum. 240 x 150 mm. (9 3/8 x 5 7/8"). 12 volumes..
HANDSOME DARK PURPLE CRUSHED MOROCCO, GILT, triple gilt-ruled border with sprays of flowers in each corner and along the sides, raised bands, compartments with gilt lettering and tooling, top edge gilt, RED MOROCCO DOUBLURES bordered in purple border, featuring several gilt rules and scrolling gilt tools in panel corners, red watered silk endpapers. With portrait frontispieces and numerous gravure plates. Limitation statement of first volume with the initials of the printer, D. B. Updike of the Merrymount Press; flyleaf of each volume with morocco ex-libris of Francis Kettaneh. ◆Extremities with the occasional tiny nick, spines slightly sunned, covers with a few negligible scratches, a few pages with light thumbing in the margins, but all of these blemishes trivial. A FINE SET INSIDE AND OUT.

This finely bound, finely printed, and strictly limited set includes the biography, prose, letters, essays, and poetry of "the prince of English essayists." According to Day, Charles Lamb contributed to the essay form by concentrating on feeling (rather than thought), by projecting a fuller sense of self into the work, and by imbuing his text with a poetic or lyrical quality. Lamb was also an accomplished poet, writing in both rhyming and blank verse, as well as a friend to many of the leading literary figures of the Romantic period--his correspondents include Wordsworth, Southey, Hazlitt, and Coleridge, whom he had known since childhood. Lamb's letters, by turns witty and meditative, reveal a life of intense reading and writing at a time when British literature was undergoing a radical transformation. Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was educated at Christ's Hospital and at 17 joined the East India House, where he worked from 1792-1825. In 1796, Lamb's sister Mary stabbed and killed their mother with scissors in a fit of insanity. Charles took on her care as well as serving as sole support for a dying aunt and a prematurely senile father. Nonetheless, Lamb and his sister were devoted to one another and lived long and productive lives, publishing together the wildly popular "Tales from Shakespeare" (1807) and "Mrs. Leicester's School" (1809), both of which are included here. Though unsigned, the bindings are extremely attractive and fittingly luxurious for the limited-edition contents--the thick gilt tooling, luxurious doublures, and red silk endpapers housing tactilely pleasing Japanese vellum make this set a delight both to have and to hold..