Book description
A rapturous appreciation of pork crackling, a touching description of
hungry London chimney sweeps, a discussion of the strange pleasure of
eating pineapple and a meditation on the delights of Christmas
feasting are just some of the subjects of these personal, playful
writings from early nineteenth-century essayist Charles Lamb.
Exploring the joys of food and also our complicated social
relationship with it, these essays are by turns sensuous, mischievous,
lyrical and self-mocking. Filled with a sense of hunger, they are some
of the most fascinating and nuanced works ever written about eating,
drinking and appetite.
Charles Lamb
(1775-1834) was an English essayist best known for his humorous
Essays of Elia
from which the essay 'A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig' is taken. Lamb
enjoyed a rich social life and became part of a group of young writers
that included William Hazlitt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge with whom he shared a lifelong friendship. Lamb
never achieved the same literary success as his friends but his
influence on the English essay form cannot be underestimated and his
book,
Specimens of the English Dramatic Poets
is remembered for popularising the work of Shakespeare's
contemporaries.
