The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5 The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 1796-1820 — Reading Notes

Charles Lamb’s Epistolary Voice

Charles Lamb’s letters in this collection often begin with a striking figure or a direct address. In the July 1803 letter to Rickman, he calls his enclosure "a wonder, a letter from the shades" and refers to himself as "a dead body" seeking re-enrollment among the living. This macabre humor is typical of his style, as is the quick shift to practical matters: travel plans, a request for a farewell pipe, and a complaint about notices not being honored. His sentences are short, with dashes and abrupt transitions that mimic spoken thought. The editor’s note suggests the "dead body" may refer to an article Lamb wrote, but the letter itself leaves the reference teasingly unexplained.

Mary Lamb’s Domestic and Affectionate Tone

Mary Lamb’s letter to Dorothy Wordsworth (July 1803) reveals a different voice: warmer, more detailed, and focused on family and friendship. She writes of her love for the seaside and expects "much benefit from it," but adds that Wordsworth’s "mountain scenery has spoiled us" for the flat Isle of Thanet. Her sentences are longer and more flowing, with affectionate inquiries about "poor Mrs. Clarkson" and the Wordsworth children. She closes with a wish to see Dorothy again, acknowledging that "you are too happy ever to wish to come to London." The editor’s footnotes fill in the context—John Wordsworth’s birth, Southey’s remark about children and kittens—but Mary’s own words convey her warmth and her awareness of the distance between their lives.

Editorial Annotations as a Second Narrative

E. V. Lucas’s footnotes create a parallel layer of information, often more detailed than the letters themselves. In the July 1803 letters, he explains the reference to Mary of Buttermere, the play the Lambs saw, and the legal case over copyright that prevented inclusion of some letters. His preface notes that this edition contains 618 letters, more than Canon Ainger’s 467 but fewer than the Boston Bibliophile Society’s 762, and he explains the copyright restrictions that led to abstracts rather than full texts. These annotations give the reader a sense of the editorial labor behind the collection, and they occasionally overshadow the letters by providing more narrative than the correspondents themselves.

Reading these letters in sequence, one notices how the Lambs’ voices shift with their correspondents: Charles is more playful with Rickman, Mary more confiding with Dorothy. The editor’s notes, while informative, sometimes interrupt this flow. A reader may choose to read the letters first, then return to the footnotes, to preserve the immediacy of the Lambs’ own words.

That rainy afternoon, I lost myself in the Lambs’ letters—their small domestic aches and sudden laughter felt almost tangible. Mary’s frank notes about sleepless nights lingered, and later, idly, I found myself turning to The Wound Dresser A Series of Letters Written from the Hospitals in Washington during the War of the Rebellion — Background and Themes. It was a different war, a different century, yet the same raw, unpolished truth of simply enduring.