Charles Lamb and the Manchester Observer

The notion that Charles Lamb ‘evades the present’, and ‘was indifferent to ideas, to politics’ has been superseded by critics, such as Nicholas Roe and Felicity James, who focus on his relationship with radicalism in the years immediately following the fall of the Bastille. Thus far any work on Lamb’s engagement with politics has been confined to the 1790s, rather than the next period of intense radical activity that occurred after the ending of the wars in 1815. E. V. Lucas notes that the years from 1819 to 1820 were ‘Lamb’s busiest period as a caustic critic of affairs—in The Examiner, possibly the Morning Chronicle, and principally in The Champion’. In this note I will provide new evidence that Lamb can be found embedded in radical circles around the time of the Peterloo massacre by adding the ultra-radical Manchester Observer to the list of Lamb’s publishers.