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At Large and At Small

From Charles Lamb to ‘netiquette’

Anne Fadiman
Allen Lane, 220pp, £12.99,

John Gross

Tuesday, 11th December 2007

John Gross

A few years ago the American author Anne Fadiman scored a hit with Ex Libris, an amiable miscellany of book-talk touching lightly on such topics as the quirks of proof-reading and the vicissitudes of plagiarism. The subject matter of her new book, At Large and At Small, is much more varied, but the flavour is scarcely less literary. It is a collection of essays, designed to illustrate the continuing possibilities of what used to be known as the familiar essay — the bundle of personal reflections of which the most famous exponent was Charles Lamb.

Familiar essays, cherished in their heyday by belletrists and inflicted on generations of schoolchildren, have long since lost favour as a literary form. But Fadiman isn’t afraid of being thought old-fashioned. She even tells us that she has ‘a monumental crush’ on Lamb, and one can’t help admiring her for proclaiming the fact so boldly. It costs nothing, in 2007, to heap praise on Samuel Beckett, let’s say, or Virginia Woolf. But Charles Lamb — that takes courage.

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ian skidmore

December 20th, 2007 11:22am

She is right bout Lamb. You are wrong. Age cannot wither him,nor the years condemn

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