Empire, Coleridge, and Charles Lamb's consumer imagination.(Critical Essay) From: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 | Date: September 22, 2003| Author: Fang, Karen | COPYRIGHT 2003 Rice University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Scholarship on Charles Lamb typically presents his essays as responses to personal tragedy or as idealistic fancies detached from history, and perpetuates romantic conventions by unfavorably comparing the minor writer to Coleridge. This article intervenes in this trend by reading Lamb's "Elia" essays as emulations of his East India House employment, which adopt its modes of mechanical reproduction and professional promotion in order to elevate Lamb's literary output to that of Cole...