The complete online text of Charles Lamb by Bryan Procter.

"It seemed my destiny," wrote Bryan Waller Procter with typical self-effacement, "to float along from the cradle to the grave on the happy stream of mediocrity." Donald H. Reiman, editor of the Garland facsimiles of books by "Barry Cornwall," offers a bl...

Bryan Waller Procter was an aspiring writer of moderate abilities who was accepted into London literary circles. His career in the legal profession provided him with an income sufficient to support his chosen lifestyle. William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and C...

The author Charles Lamb deserves more popularity than he currently experiences. His life was often difficult, including attendance at a harsh charity school, episodes of insanity, and a family murder. Lamb's writing, especially his essays and criticism, remain perceptive and witty. Lamb was also...

CHARLES LAMB is one of those writers who are remembered as much for the company they kept as for their own literary achievement. Although he was an esteemed essayist in his own time, Lamb is better known now as a friend of writers...

I read pretty much all of At Large and At Small in one sitting, slightly hung over, lying around in bed on a Saturday morning. When I’m reading a collection of essays by a pronounced journalist (Fadiman being the former editor of The American Scholar),...