SOURCE: Woodbery, Bonnie. “Lamb's ‘Confessions of a Drunkard’ in Context.” The Charles Lamb Bulletin, no. 90 (April 1995): 94-100.

In the following essay, Woodbery places Lamb's “Confessions of a Drunkard” in its appropriate contexts of time and publication to view the essay as “a satiric portrait of a drunkard that parodies both Utilitarian ideals and evangelical tracts of conversion,” revealing Lamb's ambivalent feelings concerning alcohol.

We know¹ from the records kept by the ancient wine firm of Messrs Berry Brothers and Co. on the weight of their distinguished customers that in 1814, when Charles Lamb was 39, he weighed in at a mere 9 stone 3[frac12] lbs., or approximately 129[frac12] lbs. ‘in boots’.² Other descriptions of Lamb's size include Thomas Hood's observation that Lamb had almost ‘immaterial legs’ and Carlyle's less than flattering depiction of Lamb as the ‘leanest of mankind’, in ‘tiny blackbreeches buttoned to the knee cap and no further, surmounting...