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 «s early as 1811, and one is perhaps as late as 1882, 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, 1828, and The Lott Essays of Elia, 1888. 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. 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," on page 462. The "Confessions of a Drunkard" will be found in Vol. I.
