ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the letters of Charles Lamb to his friend Thomas Manning. Lamb wrote his letters in a 'bold free hand and a fearless flourish' which present no great difficulties to editors, though his spelling and punctuation were sometimes erratic. The humour and 'nonsense' of his letters is sometimes seen as a disguise for mental instability and deep anguish. As for the professor he actually dives into Tavernier and Chardins Persian travels for a story to form a new drama for the sweet tooth of this fastidious age. Lamb's reputation as a writer may have fallen since the 19th and early 20th centuries, at any rate among academic critics, but he has never been short of readers who agree with the essayist E. V. Lucas as to 'the value and importance of these letters, their good sense, their wit, their humanity, their fun, their timeliness and timelessness'.
