'I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early.'Charles Lamb was employed full-time as a clerk in the City of London for most of his adult life, hence his literary output is relatively small when compared with freelance contemporaries such as Thomas De Quincey or William Hazlitt. Nevertheless, what Lamb's oeuvre might lack in size it more than makes up for in quality: both as a contributor to the great Romantic conversation about art and life, and as the English language's greatest familiar essayist, Lamb is an indispensable figure. This volume contains The Works of Charles Lamb, a collection of poetry, prose, and drama published under Lamb's imprimatur in 1818. It is the first volume in The Collected Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, the first scholarly edition of their works in a century.