Empire, Coleridge, and Charles Lamb's Consumer Imagination

Scholarship on Charles Lamb typically presents his essays as responses to personal tragedy or as idealistic fancies detached from history, and perpetuates romantic conventions by unfavorably comparing the minor writer to Coleridge. This article intervenes in this trend by reading Lamb's "Elia" essays as emulations of his East India House employment, which adopt its modes of mechanical reproduction and professional promotion in order to elevate Lamb's literary output to that of Coleridge. Porcelain is the key industrial commodity upon which Lamb's analogy hinges. Consequently, this reading centers upon the essay, "Old China," to unveil the triumphal imperialism in Lamb's writing.