SOURCE: Misenheimer, James B., Jr., and Carolyn Misenheimer. “Another Elia: Essays in a Minor Key.” The Charles Lamb Bulletin, n.s., no. 60 (October 1987): 109-22.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture, the Misenheimers probe the ironic wit and technique of four lesser-known Elian essays.

To refer to ‘another Elia’ will to some seem paradoxical, since those who know him know that there is only one Elia, true and everlasting, and that he is likely to remain unique across the ages yet to be born. Elia's most memorable artistic strengths have been seen by posterity as residing primarily in the realm of the nostalgic and prominently in the mode of the ironic, though neither is all pervasive. Indeed, as recently as 1984, when the sesquicentennial of the death of Charles Lamb was observed, essays appeared in both popular news magazines and scholarly journals alike celebrating the aesthetic universality...