Essays of Elia written by Charles Lamb

The following essays are included in the collection:

• "The South-Sea House"
• "Oxford In The Vacation"
• "Christ's Hospital Five-And-Thirty Years Ago"
• "The Two Races Of Men"
• "New Year's Eve"
• "Mrs Battle's Opinions On Whist"
• "A Chapter On Ears"
• "All Fools' Day"
• "A Quakers' Meeting"
• "The Old and The New Schoolmaster"
• "Valentine's Day"
• "Imperfect Sympathies"
• "Witches And Other Night-Fears"
• "My Relations"
• "Mackery End, In Hertfordshire"
• "Modern Gallantry"
• "The Old Benchers Of The Inner Temple"
• "Grace Before Meat"
• "My First Play"
• "Dream-Children; A Reverie"
• "Distant Correspondents"
• "The Praise Of Chimney-Sweepers"
• "A Complaint Of The Decay Of Beggars In The Metropolis"
• "A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig"
• "A Bachelor's Complaint Of the Behaviour Of Married People"
• "On Some Of The Old Actors"
• "On The Artificial Comedy Of The Last Century"
• "On The Acting Of Munden".

And in Last Essays of Elia:

• "Blakesmoor in H——shire"
• "Poor Relations"
• "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading"
• "Stage Illusion"
• "To the Shade of Elliston"
• "Ellistoniana"
• "The Old Margate Hoy"
• "The Convalescent"
• "Sanity of True Genius"
• "Captain Jackson"
• "The Superannuated Man"
• "The Genteel Style of Writing"
• "Barbara S——
• "The Tombs in the Abbey"
• "Amicus Redivivus"
• "Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sidney"
• "Newspapers Thirty-Five Years Ago"
• "Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art"
• "The Wedding"
• "Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age"
• "Old China"
• "The Child Angel; a Dream"
• "Confessions of a Drunkard"
• "Popular Fallacies".

Among the individual essays, "Dream-Children" and "Old China" are perhaps the most highly and generally admired. A short musical work by Elgar was inspired by "Dream-Children". Lamb's fondness for stage drama provided the subjects of a number of the essays: "My First Play," "Stage Illusion," Ellistoniana," etc. "Blakesmoor in H——shire" was actually written about Blakesware in Hertfordshire, the great house where Lamb's maternal grandmother was housekeeper for many years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essays_of_Elia

http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia1/index.html

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10343