Published under the pseudonym "Elia," Charles Lamb’s book, by turns witty, insightful, self-deprecating, and philosophical, offers an unusually warm, human glimpse of life in a circle that included such luminaries as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and William Hazlitt. Published in The London Magazine in the early 1820s, these often nostalgic essays are important documents in the development of autobiographical writing which gained him a devoted following among 19th-century readers.