Published under the pseudonym 'Elia,' Charles Lamb's series of essays on subjects ranging from the impressionability of schoolboys to the peculiarity of one's relations, from the pitfalls of lending books to the delights of a roast meal, gained him a devoted following among nineteenth-century readers. By turns witty, insightful, self-deprecating and philosophical, in these essays Lamb offers an unusually warm, human glimpse of life in a circle that included such luminaries as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and William Hazlitt.