Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Charles and James Ollier, 18 June 1818
DEAR Sir (whichever opens it) I am going off to
Birminghm. I find my books, whatever faculty of selling they
may have (I wish they had more for your | my sake), are admirably adapted for giving away. You
have been bounteous. Six more and I shall have satisfied all just claims. Am I
taking too great a liberty in begging you to send 4 as follows, and reserve 2
for me when I come home? That will make 31. Thirty-one times 12 is 372
shillings, Eighteen pounds twelve Shillings!!!—but here are my friends, to
whom, if you could transmit them, as I shall be away a month, you will greatly
oblige the obliged
C. Lamb.
Mr. Ayrton, James Street, Buckingham
Gate
Mr. Alsager, Suffolk Street East,
Southwark, by Horsemonger Lane and in one parcel
directed to R.
Southey, Esq., Keswick, Cumberland
one for R. S.;
and one for Wm. Wordsworth, Esqr.
If you will be kind enough simply to
write “from the Author” in all 4—you will still further etc.—
Either Longman or
Murray is in the frequent habit
of sending books to Southey and will
take charge of the Parcel. It will be as well to write in at the beginning
thus
R. Southey Esq. from the Author.
W. Wordsworth Esq. from the Author.
Then, if I can find the remaining 2, left for me at
Russell St when I return, rather than encroach any
more on the heap, I will engage to make no more new friends ad infinitum,
yourselves being the last.
I think Southey
will give us a lift in that damn’d Quarterly. I meditate an attack upon that
Cobler Gifford, which shall
appear immediately after any favourable mention which
S. may make in the Quarterly. It can’t in decent gratitude appear before.
Thomas Massa Alsager (1779-1846)
Journalist and music critic for the
Times; he was the friend of
Leigh Hunt and Thomas Barnes; John Keats was reading Alsager's copy of Chapman's poems when
he wrote the famous sonnet.
William Ayrton (1777-1858)
A founding member of the Philharmonic Society and manager of the Italian opera at the
King's Theatre; he wrote for the
Morning Chronicle and the
Examiner.
William Gifford (1756-1826)
Poet, scholar, and editor who began as a shoemaker's apprentice; after Oxford he
published
The Baviad (1794),
The Maeviad
(1795), and
The Satires of Juvenal translated (1802) before becoming
the founding editor of the
Quarterly Review (1809-24).
Thomas Norton Longman (1771-1842)
A leading London publisher whose authors included Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, and
Moore.
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
The Quarterly Review. (1809-1967). Published by John Murray, the
Quarterly was instigated by Walter
Scott as a Tory rival to the
Edinburgh Review. It was edited by
William Gifford to 1824, and by John Gibson Lockhart from 1826 to 1853.
