The element of autobiography in the essays of Lamb.

Or

Discuss that the essays of Lamb are his self portrayal.

 

The element of autobiography:

Lamb is the greatest personal essayist and a close study of his essays reveals not only his own life but also his friends and relatives. There is a confidential note of friendliness is all his essays and he reveals to his readers all his personal memories, secret desires, habits and likings and dislikings of his real life. This autobiographical element in his essays is presented in various ways. We find almost the whole life of the essayist-sometimes he describes his childhood, in another essay his school days at Christ’s Hospital, in others his poverty. Lamb first opened his eyes in the Inner Temple which he describes his early days particularly in Recollections of Christ’s Hospital. He also throws light on his school days when he had developed friendship with Coleridge. In The Superannuated Man, we find his returned life from the East India Company and his relief after he is free from the burden of daily office work. We get a complete knowledge of his friends and relatives from his essays. He has given a detailed account of his friend George Dyer in Oxford. In the Vocation as well as full living picture of his relatives. In old Benchers, he speaks of his father and his brother James in My Relations, his grand mother in Dream Children. It is so minute that he has not concealed even his love affair and her final frustration which remained a life long pain in his heart. We also find his deep desire to have family and children which desire he could never fulfil in his life.

When he comes to describe his personal matters, we notice his feelings, aspirations and even his likings. At various places, he describes his fear from novelty, from death, his inability to express his feelings before others, his short stature and lack of personal charm and his weakness of wine and tobacco. The only thing that he does not talk about the insanity of his family-his sister and his own self. His hatred for the Scotch and the Jews is clearly expressed is imperfect sympathies. There is only one person in his life about whom Lamb is completely silent and she is his mother who had been the unfortunate victim of the madness of his sister Mary.

Lamb loved mystification which he employed even in the portrayal of his autobiographical references. He presents a peculiar mixture of fact and fiction. Whenever he felt that the artistic effect could be enhanced by falsedetails or half truths, he did not hesitate in the least. He worked in South Sea House twenty or thirty years go but in the South Sea House he says that he worked there forty years ago. He calls his sister not by her real name but as Cousin Bridget. At the same time he declares “Brother or Sister I never had any to know them.” In another essay he tells that he was an ignorant man while in reality he was a very learned man. So he always does not tell truth about himself. Sometimes he gives only half names or the first letter only and leaves things to the imagination of the readers. He may sometimes not tell the reality but we atonce realist the truth. This is why it is said that If Milton is the hero of Paradise Lost, Lamb is the real subject of the Essays of Elia’. No doubt he does not always reveal the facts, but the truth is not always hidden. Hugh Walker says that such things are hard to be found in English essays in any other essayist and he is constantly autobiographical.

Important Links

• John Keats Biography
• Percy Bysshe Shelley Biography
• William Wordsworth as a Romantic Poet
• William Wordsworth as a poet of Nature
• William Wordsworth Biography
• William Collins Biography
• John Dryden Biography
• Alexander Pope Biography
• Metaphysical Poetry: Definition, Characteristics and John Donne as a Metaphysical Poet
• John Donne as a Metaphysical Poet
• Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116: (explained in hindi)
• What is poetry? What are its main characteristics?
• Debate- Meaning, Advantage & Limitations of Debate
• Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) Biography, Quotes, & Poem Indian Weavers
• Charles Mackay: Poems Sympathy, summary & Quotes – Biography
• William Shakespeare – Quotes, Plays & Wife – Biography
• Ralph Waldo Emerson – Poems, Quotes & Books- Biography
• What is a lyric and what are its main forms?

Disclaimer