SOURCE: Aaron, Jane. “Charles and Mary Lamb: The Critical Heritage.” The Charles Lamb Bulletin, n.s., no. 59 (July 1987): 73-85.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture, Aaron summarizes the vicissitudes of Lamb's literary reputation since his death.

In 1975, this society, the Charles Lamb Society, marked the bicentenary of Lamb's birth with an address by George L. Barnett on ‘The History of Charles Lamb's Reputation’.¹ Barnett's essay concentrated mainly on the critical reception of Lamb's writings when they first appeared, and dealt but briefly with the subsequent ramifications in Lamb's literary prestige. There are contradictions and anomalies in the history of Lamb's reputation which have not yet been fully explored, and which can cast an interesting light not only upon Lamb himself but also upon the processes and trends of literary criticism generally, during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The aim of this present paper is...