SOURCE: Ruddick, William. “Recent Approaches to Charles Lamb.” The Charles Lamb Bulletin, no. 98 (April 1997): 50-53.

In the following essay, Ruddick summarizes trends in Lamb scholarship since the 1960s.

Taking on the editorship of the Charles Lamb Bulletin has led me to review the current situation in Lamb studies.¹ The availability of most of the required tools for research in the form of accurate texts, of letters and a much increased biographical knowledge of Lamb's closest literary friends (in particular Coleridge) has stimulated historical investigation of Lamb's work and its connection with that of other members of the group. At the same time study of the Elia persona and Lamb's use of masks has shown his subtleties as a practitioner of ambiguity, paradox, the avoidance of resolution and closure, and other features which have been much emphasized by recent criticism generally. Close readings of the Elia essays which also...