Lamb's literary career began with poetry creation. His poems are deeply influenced by Coleridge, and individual chapters may be co-written with Coleridge. He won by rigorous meter, and was not good at writing blank verse. His poems include The Familiar Old Face (1798) and A Short-lived Baby, but his achievements are not high. He also wrote plays, including the poetic drama John? Woodville (182) and farce H Jun (186). Later, he and Mary co-wrote children's literature works, the most successful of which was The Tales of Shakespeare (187), which retelled some of Shakespeare's plays in prose, which was popular for a while and has been passed down to this day. In addition, he also wrote a tragic story "Rosamund? Gray "(1798). Published in 188, A Model of Shakespeare's Contemporary English Drama Poets is an anthology of works, which collects fragments of works of famous playwrights in the 17th century with short comments. At that time, the British showed great indifference to Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights. Lamb focuses on the introduction and re-arouses readers' interest in Elizabethan literary heritage.
There are not many critical articles written by Lamb, among which "On Shakespeare's Tragedy" shows that his interest in Shakespeare's plays lies in the character, not the plot structure. He thinks Shakespeare's plays are not suitable for performance, but only for reading. His only long commentary is Wordsworth's Travel, in which the poet's genius and originality are expressed. Lamb's views on literary criticism are scattered in his letters. He admired the drama poets and essayists Fowler, Brown and Burton in the 17th century and the novelists in the 18th century. He is interested in realistic works in all periods, but he is tired of artificial works and idyllic poems. He likes to talk about genre form rather than content, and never discusses the layout structure of his works.
lamb's greatest achievement is his essays. The most striking feature of his essays is their cordial style, rich flavor of life and human touch. Unlike the essayist in the 18th century, Lamb loves to preach the truth and expound philosophical thoughts. He avoids talking about politics, current affairs, gender relations, religion and other urgent issues, but prefers to talk about trivial matters of life and intellectual topics, such as "Fool's Day", "Old China", "A Bundle of Prejudice" and "An Encyclopedia Behind the World". Most of his essays are closely related to his experiences, some of which are elegant and humorous and full of interest; Others are sad and touching. Lamb is good at scrutinizing words, loves to use allusions and pays attention to details. His style is full of personal characteristics, but we can see the influence of Montaigne, Burton and Brown. Lamb's essays were later collected into two collections, Elijah's Essays (1823) and Late Essays (1833). Most of the excellent works are in the first episode, and the masterpiece in the second episode is only "The Retiree", which is quite interesting to write about the idle life after retirement. He is known to the world as "Ilya", the author of "Essays".
Lamb is also one of the famous calligraphers in Britain. His letters record his contacts with some famous literati of his time, and his friendship with each of them has its own characteristics; Secondly, his letters are full of essays. Regardless of current affairs, religion or philosophy, there are many opinions on literature, news from friends and his own life and hobbies. And more importantly, talk about books. Lamb loves books all his life, which can be clearly seen in his letters. All Lamb's letters are permeated with the melancholy mood of the frustrated.