Lamb, Charles

With extensive revisions and deletions, signed "C.L.," sent as a letter to Walter Wilson with an additional postscript ("Dear W. Introduce or omit this as you like. I think I wrote better about it in a letter to you From India....") signed "C. Lamb," three pages, 4to, integral address panel, n.p., [c. 28 May 1829]; two seal tears to margin of second sheet, some browning. [with]: ink and watercolour wash portrait of Lamb, inscribed "C.L. 1802" (3  5 / 8 x 2  7 / 8  in.; 92 x 74 mm), laid down to a 4to sheet; two letters relating to the portrait including one from Bernard Quaritch offering it to Dean Sage of Albany, New York ("Knowing the interest you take in that fascinating man Charles Lamb, I send for your inspection an early original portrait of him..."), both dated 1895; and two further engraved portraits of Lamb; bound together in tan straight-grained morocco gilt.

Sale, Christie's New York, 14 December 2000, lot 102. acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through James Cummins

"While all ages and descriptions of people hand delighted over the 'Adventures of Robinson Crusoe' — and shall continue to do so, we trust, while the world lasts — how few comparatively will bear to be told, that there exist other inferior Fictitious Narratives by the same writer … Roxana — Singleton — Moll Flanders — Colonel Jack — are all genuine offspring of the same father…"

A convincing and engaging essay, prepared for Walter Wilson's Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel De Foe (1830), which Wilson had announced eight years earlier, having acquired his own extensive collection of Defoe's publications. 

In this example of Lamb's scarcely seen prose manuscripts, Lamb extols the quality of Defoe's writing ("the Narrative manner of Defoe has a naturalness about it beyond that of any other Novel or Romance writer...It is impossible to believe while you are reading them, that a real person is not narrating to you every where nothing but what really happened to himself…"), discuss his characters, and describes his readership.

The essay was included in Wilson's Memoirs, pp. 636-639. The published text corresponds very closely to this manuscript, observing his autograph revisions, amendments and deletions.

The watercolor portrait bound before the essay was originally in the collection of Edward Moxon, before being offered for sale by Bernard Quaritch to Dean Sage.