Brewer's: Elia

A nom de plume adopted by Charles Lamb. (Essays of Elia.)

“The adoption of this signature was purely accidental.Lamb's first contribution to the London Magazine was a description of the old South-Sea House, where he had passed a few months' novitiate as a clerk, ... and remembering the name of a gay light-hearted foreigner, who fluttered there at the time, substituted his name for his own.” —Talfourd.

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