James Aitken (1) (1869–1951)

This is a nice little selection of letters; though given that they were selected and edited in 1943, there is a certain bias and tone which makes the book show its age. Still, it convinced me more than ever that I would have liked to have known Fanny Burney, that I find Johnson alternately endearing and annoying, and that I really wish the Lamb siblings had had access to therapy. Same as always, then.

Some of the selections in this were thoroughly strange, and speak as much to the prevailing social mores at the time this book was put together (it was published in 1943) as they do to those of the nineteenth century. Still, it was a nice little book to dip into, and rather makes me wish that I'd been able to gad about the Mediterranean with a young Disraeli--loafing around the Spanish costas before they were irremediably ruined by package holidays must have been fun.