Charles Lamb and the Lloyds ‘WITH CORRECTIONS FOR SECOND EDITION’

The author’s copy of the first edition which he has annotated liberally ‘With corrections for Second Edition’ as he puts it on the title page. This second edition never came, lending particularly interest to the emendations made by this recognised expert on the essayist and friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth, Charles Lamb. The annotations can be dated to the year after first publication, 1899, from a sheet laid in which offers Lucas’s signed ‘Preface to Second Edition’ which attributes many of the corrections to the ‘vigilence of reviewers’ and ‘kindness of friends’.

His corrections are extensive, written in pencil and pen and include pinned sections of new text to be introduced. These accompany substantial excisions to earlier text as well as minor stylistic and substantive factual changes intended for the printed text. We can find no indication that the planned second edition ever appeared.

Edward Lucas (1868-1938) published extensively on Charles Lamb, and much else, working for Punch for many decades, introducing his colleague A A Milne to his future illustrator, E H Shepard.

DESCRIPTION: Maroon cloth, slightly rubbed with minor spine lean; brown coated endpapers. Lucas’s inscription to the title page: