A Letter (Ein Brief, 1902, collected in The Lord Chandos Letter and Other Writings, ed. John Banville, trans. Joel Rotenberg, 2005)
1902
While clearly fictional – this ‘letter’ purports to be sent in 1603 from the English Lord Chandos to Francis Bacon – this nonetheless merits categorization as an essay beca...
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A Defence of Poetry (Written 1821, first published posthumously in Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, ed. Mary Shelley, 1840)
1821
Written in answer to his friend Thomas Love Peacock’s essay ‘The Four Ages of Poetry’ (1820), this begins as a treatise of ‘accurate philosophy’ but, aptly, evolves into ...
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A Chapter on Ears (London Magazine, March 1821, and reprinted in Elia, 1823)
1821
After the most extreme example of Lamb’s periphrastic, ironic, Sternean style – ‘those exterior twin appendages, hanging ornaments and (architecturally speaking) handsome vol...
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A Berlin Chronicle (1932, but published only in 1970, from an incomplete manuscript)
1932
To test the power and processes of memory, Benjamin recollects splinters of his childhood and time as a young, pre-First World War revolutionary. But space, the depopulate...
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