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THE ESSAYS OF ELIA

AND

ELIANA

BY

CHARLES LAMB

LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET

COVENT GARDEN

1890.

1218e

1890

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

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NOTICE.

THE present edition of Elia's Essays is by far the most complete ever published. Some fine passages have been restored to the "Essays of Elia ;" and "Eliana" consists of papers contributed to various magazines and miscellanies which are almost unknown to readers of the present day.

The chief alterations Charles Lamb made in his prose writings were in the way of excision. His Essays, when republished in a collected form, were carefully, even ruthlessly, relieved of all redundancies. Some passages, however, were evidently withdrawn for purely personal reasons, and these have been restored, with a few characteristic notes, which, although they may have seemed to Lamb too trifling to stand in his collected Essays, will be extremely interesting to every lover of Elia. The other suppressed passages have, as a rule, been given in the Appendix. Almost the only exception is in the Essay on "Books and Reading." To these "Detached Thoughts" (as they really are) we have ventured to restore some passages of biographical rather than literary value.

In every case the restored passages have been enclosed in brackets.

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