Scope and arrangement
This is a synthetic collection consisting of manuscripts, correspondence, eleven undated commonplace books, an album dating from 1831 to 1843, financial documents, and pictorial works. The manuscripts include poems, portions of plays, notes, essays, and reviews in holograph, as well as manuscripts of essays and poems relating to the author by Thomas De Quincey, George A. Sala, Walter Wilson, William Wordsworth, and others. The correspondence includes letters by the author, dating from 1797 to [1834], to Thomas Allsop, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hone, Leigh Hunt, Edward Moxon, Robert Southey, and others. Also present are letters relating to the author, dating from 1798 to circa 1818, between various correspondents including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Lamb, John May, Robert Southey, and others.
The Charles Lamb collection of papers are arranged in four series: