Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Edward Moxon, [December? 1830]
DEAR M.
Something like this was what I meant. But on reading it over, I see no great
fun or use in it. It will only stuff up and encroach upon the sheet you
propose. Do as, and what, you please. Send Proof, or not, as you like. If you
send, send me a copy or 2 of the Album Verses, and the Juvenile Poetry if bound.
I am happy to say Mary is mending, but not enough to give me hopes of being able
to leave her. I sadly regret that I shall possibly not see Southey or Wordsworth, but I dare not invite either of them here, for fear
of exciting my sister, whose only chance is quiet. You don’t know in what
a sad state we have been.
I think the
Devil may come out without prefaces, but use your discretion.
Make my kindest remembces to
Southey, with my heart’s
thanks for his kind intent. I am a little easier about my Will, and as
Ryle is Executor, and will do all a
friend can do at the Office, and what little I leave will buy an annuity to
piece out tolerably, I am much easier.
Yours ever
C. L.
To 64 New Bond St.
Mary Anne Lamb (1764-1847)
Sister of Charles Lamb with whom she wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807). She lived with
her brother, having killed their mother in a temporary fit of insanity.
Edward Moxon (1801-1858)
Poet and bookseller; after employment at Longman and Company he set up in 1830 with
financial assistance from Samuel Rogers and became the leading publisher of literary
poetry.
Charles Ryle (1795 c.-1867)
The friend and executor of Charles Lamb; he was employed as an auditor at the East India
House from 1810 to his retirement in 1852; his wife Anne died the following year.
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.
