Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Study Of The Dramatic Criticism Of Charles Lamb, Lyman Francis Smart

English Language and Literature ETDs

In the one hundred fifty years since Charles Lamb published what might be termed his first formal criticism, opinions of his stature as a critic have waxed and waned. His critical writing has been attached as the "blasphemies of a poor manic," and praised as possibly the greatest applied criticism in English. Recent critical estimates of British criticism have tended to ignore Lamb or to damn him with faint praise.

The purpose of this study is to re-examine the earlier attitudes toward Lamb and his writing on the drama, and to look with fresh perspective at the most noteworthy of …