찰스램 수필선 — 엘리아 수필

THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB, VOLUME 2

ELIA; and THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA

BY

CHARLES LAMB

EDITED BY

E.V. LUCAS

WITH A FRONTISPIECE

INTRODUCTION

This volume contains the work by which Charles Lamb is best known and upon which his fame will rest--_Elia_ and _The Last Essays of Elia_. Although one essay is as early as 1811, and one is perhaps as late as 1832, the book represents the period between 1820 and 1826, when Lamb was between forty-five and fifty-one. This was the richest period of his literary life.

The text of the present volume is that of the first edition of each book--_Elia_, 1823, and _The Last Essays of Elia_, 1833. The principal differences between the essays as they were printed in the _London Magazine_ and elsewhere, and as they were revised for book form by their author, are shown in the Notes, which, it should be pointed out, are much fuller in my large edition. The three-part essay on "The Old Actors" (_London Magazine_, February, April, and October, 1822), from which Lamb prepared the three essays; "On Some of the Old Actors," "The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," and "The Acting of Munden," is printed in the Appendix as it first appeared. The absence of the "Confessions of a Drunkard" from this volume is due to the fact that Lamb did not include it in the first edition of _The Last Essays of Elia_. It was inserted later, in place of "A Death-Bed," on account of objections that were raised to that essay by the family of Randal Norris. The story is told in the notes to "A Death-Bed." The "Confessions of a Drunkard" will be found in Vol. I.