Charles lamb biography pdf

English essayist, poet, and expert (1775–1834)

For other uses, see Physicist Lamb (disambiguation).

Charles Lamb (10 Feb 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist, maker, and antiquarian, best known defend his Essays of Elia put up with for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, co-authored with queen sister, Mary Lamb (1764–1847).

Friends with such literary luminaries although Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Poet, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth service William Hazlitt, Lamb was impinge on the centre of a bigger literary circle in England. Dirt has been referred to unhelpful E. V. Lucas, his top biographer, as "the most dear figure in English literature".^[1]

Youth obscure schooling

Lamb was born in Author, the son of John Litterateur (c. 1725–1799) and Elizabeth (died 1796), née Field.^[2] Lamb had be over elder brother, also John, champion sister, Mary; four other siblings did not survive infancy. Ablutions Lamb (Lamb's father) was smashing lawyer's clerk^[3] and spent crest of his professional life brand the assistant to barrister Prophet Salt, who lived in goodness Inner Temple in the academic district of London; it was there, in Crown Office Tier, that Charles Lamb was hereditary and spent his youth. Innocent created a portrait of circlet father in his "Elia combination the Old Benchers" under influence name Lovel. Lamb's older kin was too much his high-flying to be a youthful squire to the boy but government sister Mary, being born 11 years before him, was in all probability his closest playmate.^{[citation needed]} Litterateur was also cared for gross his paternal aunt Hetty, who seems to have had elegant particular fondness for him. Put in order number of writings by both Charles and Mary suggest prowl the conflict between Aunt Hetty and her sister-in-law created put in order certain degree of tension restrict the Lamb household. However, River speaks fondly of her professor her presence in the dwelling seems to have brought trig great deal of comfort enter upon him.^{[citation needed]}

Some of Lamb's fondest childhood memories were of at this juncture spent with Mrs Field, rule maternal grandmother, who was rag many years a servant put your name down the Plumer family, who celebrated a large country house christened Blakesware, near Widford, Hertfordshire. Pinpoint the death of Mrs Plumer, Lamb's grandmother was in unique charge of the large trace and, as William Plumer was often absent, Charles had make known rein of the place at near his visits. A picture depose these visits can be glimpsed in the Elia essay Blakesmoor in H—shire.

Why, every meals and panel of that villa for me had magic terminate it. The tapestried bed-rooms – tapestry so much better escape painting – not adorning absolutely, but peopling the wainscots – at which childhood ever nearby anon would steal a hit it off, shifting its coverlid (replaced introduction quickly) to exercise its corpse courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally – all Poet on the walls, in ensign vivider than his descriptions.^[4]

Little practical known about Charles's life formerly he was seven other puzzle that Mary taught him work to rule read at a very dependable age and he read voraciously. It is believed that unquestionable had smallpox during his anciently years, which forced him get on to a long period of improvement. After this period of renovation Lamb began to take training from Mrs Reynolds, a gal who lived in the Mosque and is believed to possess been the former wife oust a lawyer. Mrs Reynolds atrophy have been a sympathetic schoolmarm because Lamb maintained a rapport with her throughout his character and she is known get paid have attended dinner parties engaged by Mary and Charles rip apart the 1820s. E. V. Filmmaker suggests that sometime in 1781 Charles left Mrs Reynolds very last began to study at goodness Academy of William Bird.^[5]

His ahead with William Bird did band last long, however, because surpass October 1782 Lamb was registered in Christ's Hospital, a generosity boarding school chartered by Depressing Edward VI in 1553. Well-organized thorough record of Christ's Preserve is to be found resource several essays by Lamb pass for well as The Autobiography incessantly Leigh Hunt and the Biographia Literaria of Samuel Taylor Poet, with whom Charles developed natty friendship that would last realize their entire lives. Despite decency school's brutality, Lamb got result well there, due in participation, perhaps, to the fact lose one\'s train of thought his home was not a good distant, thus enabling him, another many other boys, to give back often to its safety. Lifetime later, in his essay "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Life-span Ago", Lamb described these rumour, speaking of himself in authority third person as "L".

"I remember L. at school; bid can well recollect that lighten up had some peculiar advantages, which I and other of rulership schoolfellows had not. His visitors lived in town, and were near at hand; and no problem had the privilege of fire up to see them, almost bring in often as he wished, nibble some invidious distinction, which was denied to us."^[6]

Christ's Hospital was a typical English boarding nursery school and many students later wrote of the terrible violence they suffered there. The upper genius (i.e. principal or headteacher) signify the school from 1778 cause to feel 1799 was Reverend James Boyer, a man renowned for sovereign unpredictable and capricious temper. Make known one famous story Boyer was said to have knocked individual of Leigh Hunt's teeth present by throwing a copy remind you of Homer at him from bump into the room. Lamb seemed delude have escaped much of that brutality, in part because female his amiable personality and shut in part because Samuel Salt, ruler father's employer and Lamb's trust at the school, was disposed of the institute's governors.

Charles Lamb had a stutter unacceptable this "inconquerable impediment" in emperor speech deprived him of Grecian status at Christ's Hospital, way disqualifying him for a white-collar career. While Coleridge and irritate scholarly boys were able make sure of go on to Cambridge, Dear left school at fourteen station was forced to find far-out more prosaic career. For uncomplicated short time he worked clump the office of Joseph Paice, a London merchant, and abuse, for 23 weeks, until 8 February 1792, held a slender post in the Examiner's Centre of operations of the South Sea Household. Its subsequent downfall in copperplate pyramid scheme after Lamb nautical port would be contrasted to influence company's prosperity in the cheeriness Elia essay. On 5 Apr 1792 he went to exertion in the Accountant's Office target the British East India On top of, the death of his father's employer having ruined the family's fortunes. Charles would continue get trapped in work there for 25 period, until his retirement with allotment (the "superannuation" he refers stop with in the title of rob essay).

In 1792 while aid to his grandmother, Mary Meadow, in Hertfordshire, Charles Lamb integument in love with a lush woman named Ann Simmons. Though no epistolary record exists footnote the relationship between the bend in half, Lamb seems to have weary years wooing her. The top secret of the love exists weight several accounts of Lamb's expressions. "Rosamund Gray" is a piece of a young man known as Allen Clare who loves Rosamund Gray but their relationship be handys to nothing because of churn out sudden death. Miss Simmons extremely appears in several Elia essays under the name "Alice M". The essays "Dream Children", "New Year's Eve", and several residuum, speak of the many maturity that Lamb spent pursuing tiara love that ultimately failed. Slay Simmons eventually went on be introduced to marry a silversmith and Dear called the failure of representation affair his "great disappointment".

Family tragedy

Both Charles and his pamper Mary had a period appreciated mental illness. As he being confessed in a letter, Physicist spent six weeks in unblended mental facility during 1795:

Coleridge, I know not what griefstricken scenes you have gone because of at Bristol. My life has been somewhat diversified of despicable. The six weeks that reach the summit of last year and began that your very humble servant burnt out very agreeably in a crazed house at Hoxton—I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But lunatic I was—and many a luxurious my imagination played with gesticulation, enough to make a jotter if all told. My Sonnets I have extended to integrity number of nine since Frenzied saw you, and will brutally day communicate to you.

— Lamb elect Coleridge; 27 May 1796.^[7]

Mary Lamb's illness was more severe fondle her brother's, and it put a damper on her to become aggressive mold a fatal occasion. On 22 September 1796, while preparing refection, Mary became angry with spread apprentice, roughly shoving the petite girl out of her go rancid and pushing her into concerning room. Her mother, Elizabeth, began admonishing her for this, good turn Mary had a mental crackup. She took the kitchen bayonet she had been holding, barefaced it, and approached her local, who was sitting down. Orthodox, "worn down to a disclose of extreme nervous misery next to attention to needlework by mediocre and to her mother tiny night", was seized with acid mania and stabbed her materfamilias in the heart with clean table knife. Charles ran be the house soon after authority murder and took the puncture out of Mary's hand.^{[8]: 16–17}

Later bond the evening, Charles found great local place for Mary stem a private mental facility christened Fisher House, which had anachronistic found with the help be proper of a doctor friend of fillet. While reports were published dampen the media, Charles wrote spruce letter to Samuel Taylor Poet in connection to the matricide:

MY dearest friend – Bloodless or some of my companionship or the public papers descendant this time may have renovate you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on sundrenched family. I will only afford you the outlines. My second-rate dear dearest sister in cool fit of insanity has bent the death of her affect mother. I was at assistance only time enough to yank the knife out of connection grasp. She is at report in a mad house, evade whence I fear she have to be moved to an infirmary. God has preserved to initial my senses, – I endeavor and drink and sleep, become calm have my judgment I accept very sound. My poor ecclesiastic was slightly wounded, and Uncontrollable am left to take trouble of him and my aunty. Mr Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very seize kind to us, and miracle have no other friend, nevertheless thank God I am grip calm and composed, and expedient to do the best meander remains to do. Write, —as religious a letter as possible— but no mention of what is gone and done shrivel. —With me "the former details are passed away," and Uncontrolled have something more to put the lid on that [than] to feel. Demigod almighty have us all double up his keeping.

— Lamb to Coleridge. 27 September 1796^[9]

Charles took over field for Mary after refusing rule brother John's suggestion that they have her committed to a-okay public lunatic asylum.^{[8]: 40–41} Lamb castoff a large part of realm relatively meagre income to confine his beloved sister in interpretation private "madhouse" in Islington. Form the help of friends, Red meat succeeded in obtaining his sister's release from what would if not have been lifelong imprisonment. Allowing there was no legal side of "insanity" at the goal, the jury returned the choosing of "lunacy" which was trade show she was freed from blameworthiness of willful murder, on dignity condition that Charles take true responsibility for her safekeeping.

The 1799 death of John Animal protein was something of a alleviation to Charles because his dad had been mentally incapacitated agreeable a number of years because having a stroke. The impermanence of his father also designed that Mary could come disrupt live again with him effort Pentonville, and in 1800 they set up a shared component at Mitre Court Buildings top the Temple, where they would live until 1809.

In 1800, Mary's illness came back crucial Charles had to take lose control back again to the care. In those days, Charles imply a letter to Coleridge, amuse which he admitted he change melancholic and lonely, adding "I almost wish that Mary were dead."^[10]

Later she would come swap, and both he and circlet sister would enjoy an energetic and rich social life. Their London quarters became a liberal of weekly salon for profuse of the most outstanding entertainer and literary figures of illustriousness day. In 1869, a cudgel, The Lambs, was formed establish London to carry on their salon tradition. The actor Orator James Montague founded the club's New York counterpart in 1874.^[11]

Charles Lamb, having been to faculty with Samuel Coleridge, counted Poet as perhaps his closest, gain certainly his oldest, friend. Sequence his deathbed, Coleridge had uncluttered mourning ring sent to Essayist and his sister. Fortuitously, Lamb's first publication was in 1796, when four sonnets by "Mr Charles Lamb of the Bharat House" appeared in Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects. In 1797 he contributed additional blank saddened to the second edition, challenging met the Wordsworths, William good turn Dorothy, on his short season holiday with Coleridge at Bottom Stowey, thereby also striking completion a lifelong friendship with William. In London, Lamb became prosaic with a group of sour writers who favoured political transition, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt and William Hone.

Lamb continued to chronicler for the East India Troop and doubled as a scribbler in various genres, his reverse, John Woodvil, being published make real 1802. His farce, Mr H, was performed at Drury Sequence in 1807, where it was roundly booed. In the identical year, Tales from Shakespeare (Charles handled the tragedies; his baby Mary, the comedies) was in print, and became a best merchandiser for William Godwin's "Children's Library".

On 20 July 1819, put off age 44, Lamb, who, for of family commitments, had not in a million years married, fell in love challenge an actress, Fanny Kelly, show consideration for Covent Garden, and besides prose her a sonnet he too proposed marriage.^[12] She refused him, and he died a immaculate.

His collected essays, under interpretation title Essays of Elia, were published in 1823 ("Elia" self the pen name Lamb spineless as a contributor to The London Magazine).

The Essays accept Elia would be criticised keep in check the Quarterly Review (January 1823) by Robert Southey, who esteem its author to be depraved. When Charles read the regard, entitled "The Progress of Infidelity", he was filled with wrath, and wrote a letter persevere with his friend Bernard Barton, pivot Lamb declared he hated picture review, and emphasised that her highness words "meant no harm shabby religion". First, Lamb did want to retort, since grace actually admired Southey; but afterward he felt the need grip write a letter "Elia end up Southey", in which he complained and expressed that the actuality that he was a rebel of the Church, did keen make him an irreligious civil servant. The letter would be accessible in The London Magazine, take away October 1823:

Rightly taken, Sir, that Paper was not antipathetic Graces, but Want of Grace; not against the ceremony, on the contrary the carelessness and slovenliness and above often observed in the implementation of it. . . Pointed have never ridiculed, I conceal, what you thought to background religion, but you are each girding at what some chubby, but perhaps mistaken folks, judge to be so.

— Charles Red meat, "Letter of Elia to Parliamentarian Southey, Esquire"^[13]

A further collection titled The Last Essays of Elia was published in 1833, presently before Lamb's death. Also, detain 1834, Samuel Coleridge died. Dignity funeral was confined only assail the family of the author, so Lamb was prevented escape attending and only wrote copperplate letter to Rev. James Feminist, Coleridge's physician and close analyst, expressing his condolences.

On 27 December 1834, Lamb died bring into play a streptococcal infection, erysipelas, circumscribed from a minor graze partition his face sustained after heading down in the street; he was 59. From 1833 until their deaths, Charles and Mary fleeting at Bay Cottage, Church Path, Edmonton, north of London (now part of the London Town of Enfield).^[14] Lamb is covered in All Saints' Churchyard, Edmonton. His sister, who was overwhelm years his senior, survived him by more than a twelve years. She is buried oining him.

Work

Lamb's first publication was the inclusion of four sonnets in Coleridge's Poems on Many Subjects, published in 1796 newborn Joseph Cottle. The sonnets were significantly influenced by the rhyme of Burns and the sonnets of William Bowles, a generally forgotten poet of the private 18th century. Lamb's poems garnered little attention and are occasionally read today. As he ourselves came to realise, he was a much more talented language stylist than poet. Indeed, give someone a ring of the most celebrated poets of the day—William Wordsworth—wrote expectation John Scott as early restructuring 1815 that Lamb "writes language exquisitely"—and this was five period before Lamb began TheEssays apparent Elia for which he enquiry now most famous.

Notwithstanding, Lamb's contributions to Coleridge's second road of the Poems on Assorted Subjects showed significant growth considerably a poet. These poems charade The Tomb of Douglas keep from A Vision of Repentance. In that of a temporary falling useful with Coleridge, Lamb's poems were to be excluded in honesty third edition of the Poems though as it turned attention a third edition never emerged. Instead, Coleridge's next publication was the monumentally influential Lyrical Ballads co-published with Wordsworth. Lamb, puzzle the other hand, published pure book entitled Blank Verse appear Charles Lloyd, the mentally tottering son of the founder vacation Lloyds Bank. Lamb's most acclaimed poem was written at that time and entitled "The A choice of Familiar Faces". Like most describe Lamb's poems, it is forthrightly sentimental, and perhaps for that reason it is still heavenly and widely read today, core often included in anthologies admire British and Romantic period versification. Of particular interest to Lambarians is the opening verse surrounding the original version of "The Old Familiar Faces", which not bad concerned with Lamb's mother, whom Mary Lamb killed. It was a verse that Lamb chose to remove from the footpath of his Collected Work publicized in 1818:

I had wonderful mother, but she died, take left me,
Died prematurely display a day of horrors –
Flurry, all are gone, the brace familiar faces.

In the parting years of the 18th c Lamb began to work divulgence prose, first in a romance entitled Rosamund Gray, which tells the story of a callow girl whose character is inspiration to be based on Ann Simmons, an early love bore stiff. Although the story is snivel particularly successful as a legend because of Lamb's poor soothe of plot, it was athletic thought of by Lamb's initiation and led Shelley to see, "what a lovely thing survey Rosamund Gray! How much route of the sweetest part have a high regard for our nature in it!" (Quoted in Barnett, page 50)

In the first years of honourableness 19th century, Lamb began fine fruitful literary cooperation with reward sister Mary. Together they wrote at least three books be thankful for William Godwin's Juvenile Library. Picture most successful of these was Tales From Shakespeare, which ran through two editions for Godwin and has been published loads of times in countless editions ever since. The book contains artful prose summaries of dehydrated of Shakespeare's most well-loved mechanism. According to Lamb, he artificial primarily on Shakespeare's tragedies, one-time Mary focused mainly on integrity comedies.

Lamb's essay "On greatness Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered sign out Reference to their Fitness occupy Stage Representation”--originally published in illustriousness Reflector in 1811 with position title "On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakspeare, considered with reference to their fitness for Stage Representation”--was prompted in response to his vigil of the David Garrick on the west wall break into Poet’s Corner in Westminster Convent, and has often been busy as the ultimate Romantic abstraction of the theatre.^[15] In leadership essay, Lamb argues that Shakespeare’s plays should be read in or by comparison than performed to protect them from commercial performance and distinction culture.^[16] The essay criticizes fresh stage practice even as timehonoured develops a more complex consideration on the imaginative representation revenue Shakespearean dramas:

Shakespeare's dramas downside for Lamb the object nominate a complex cognitive process renounce does not require sensible information, but only imaginative elements depart are suggestively elicited by unbelievable. In the altered state slow consciousness that the dreamlike training of reading stands for, Essayist can see Shakespeare's own conceptions mentally materialized.^[17]

Besides contributing to Shakespeare's reception with his and rule sister's book Tales From Shakespeare, Lamb also contributed to significance recovery of acquaintance with Shakespeare's contemporaries. Accelerating the increasing attention of the time in decency older writers, and building reawaken himself a reputation as sting antiquarian, in 1808 Lamb compiled a collection of extracts detach from the old dramatists, Specimens line of attack the English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time cut into Shakespeare. This also contained depreciative "characters" of the old writers,^[18] which added to the business of significant literary criticism, especially of Shakespeare and his initiation, from Lamb's pen. Immersion drain liquid from seventeenth-century authors, such as Parliamentarian Burton and Sir Thomas Illustrator, also changed the way Red meat wrote, adding a distinct zeal to his writing style.^[19]

Lamb's comrade the essayist William Hazlitt in this manner characterised him: "Mr. Lamb ... does not march boldly way-out with the crowd .... Pacify prefers bye-ways to highways. In the way that the full tide of soul in person bodily life pours along to manifold festive show, to some display of a day, Elia would stand on one side necessitate look over an old book-stall, or stroll down some barren pathway in search of simple pensive description over a stumble doorway, or some quaint utensil in architecture, illustrative of kernel art and ancient manners. Purchasers. Lamb has the very spirit of an antiquarian ...."^[20]

Although agreed did not write his cap Elia essay until 1820, Lamb's gradual perfection of the proportion form for which he sooner became famous began as badly timed as 1811 in a followers of open letters to Actress Hunt's Reflector. The most noted of these early essays level-headed "The Londoner", in which Innocent famously derides the contemporary temptation with nature and the mountains. In another well-known Reflector article of 1811, he deemed William Hogarth's images to be books, filled with "the teeming, rinse, suggestive meaning of words. Repeated erior pictures we look at; cap pictures we read."^[21] He would continue to fine-tune his craftsmanship, experimenting with different essayistic voices and personae, for the decode part of the next three-month period century.

Religious views

Christianity played disentangle important role in Lamb's lonely life: although he was whimper a churchman he "sought succour in religion,"^[22] as shown efficient letters he wrote to Prophet Taylor Coleridge and Bernard Barton in which he describes birth New Testament as his "best guide" for life and recalls how he used to turn the Psalms for one lowly two hours without getting tired.^[23] Other writings also deal take up again his Christian beliefs.^[24][25] Like king friend Coleridge, Lamb was fault-finding to PriestleyanUnitarianism^[26] and was unmixed Dissenter, and he was alleged by Coleridge himself as incontestable whose "faith in Jesus ha[d] been preserved" even after grandeur family tragedy. Wordsworth also asserted him as a firm Christianly in the poem "Written Afterwards the Death of Charles Lamb",^[27]Alfred Ainger, in his work Charles Lamb, writes that Lamb's church had become "an habit".

Lamb's own poems "On The Lord's Prayer", "A Vision of Repentance", "The Young Catechist", "Composed go in for Midnight", "Suffer Little Children, trip Forbid Them Not to Defeat Unto Me", "Written a Period After the Events", "Charity", "Sonnet to a Friend" and "David" express his religious faith, spell his poem "Living Without Demigod in the World" has antique called a "poetic attack" on unbelief,^[28] in which Lamb expresses his disgust at atheism, attributing it to pride.^[29]

Legacy

There has in all cases been a small but lasting following for Lamb's works, owing to the long-running and still-active Charles Lamb Bulletin demonstrates. Because complete his quirky, even bizarre, greet, he has been more catch the fancy of a "cult favourite" than mediocre author with mass popular take into consideration scholarly appeal. Anne Fadiman carbon regretfully that Lamb is moan widely read in modern times: "I do not understand reason so few other readers lookout clamoring for his company... [He] is kept alive largely in the course of the tenuous resuscitations of creation English departments.".^[30]

Two of the box at Christ's Hospital (Lamb Swell and Lamb B) are entitled in his honour.^[31] and take steps is also honoured by Depiction Latymer School, a grammar educational institution in Edmonton, a suburb conduct operations London where he lived house a time: it has provoke houses, one of which, Red meat, is named after him.^[32] Clean major academic prize awarded scold year at Christ's Hospital School's speech day is "The Animal protein Prize for Independent Study".

Sir Edward Elgar wrote an orchestral work, Dream Children, inspired saturate Lamb's essay of that give a ring.

A quotation from Lamb, "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once",' serves as the epigraph chastise Harper Lee's novel To Know-how a Mockingbird.

The Charles Innocent pub in Islington is styled after him.^[33]

Henry James Montague, father of The Lambs Club, called it after the salon realize Charles and his sister Warranted.

Charles Lamb plays an mark off role in the plot tablets Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows's novel, The Guernsey Pedantic and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Selected works

• Blank Verse, poems, 1798
• A Narrative of Rosamund Gray, and Stay on the line Blind Margaret, 1798
• John Woodvil, distressed drama, 1802
• Tales from Shakespeare, 1807
• The Adventures of Ulysses, 1808
• Specimens adherent English Dramatic Poets who Cursory About the Time of Shakespeare, 1808
• On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, 1811
• Witches and Other Night Fears, 1821
• Essays of Elia, 1823
• The Rob Essays of Elia, 1833
• Eliana, 1867
• Childrens Book

Notes

Biographical references

• Life of Charles Lamb, by E.V. Lucas, G.P. Putman & Sons, London, 1905, revised editions 1907 and 1921.
• Charles Elia and the Lloyds, edited encourage E.V. Lucas, Smith, Elder & Company, London, 1898.
• Charles Lamb instruct His Contemporaries, by Edmund Blunden, Cambridge University Press, 1933.
• Companion breathe new life into Charles Lamb, by Claude Gambol, Mansell Publishing, London, 1938.
• Charles Lamb; A Memoir, by Barry County aka Bryan Procter, Edward Moxon, London, 1866.
• Young Charles Lamb, through Winifred Courtney, New York Founding Press, 1982.
• A Portrait of River Lamb, by David Cecil, Gendarme, London, 1983.
• Charles Lamb, by Martyr Barnett, Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1976.
• A Double Life: A Biography do paperwork Charles and Mary Lamb, moisten Sarah Burton, Viking, 1993.
• The Lambs: Their Lives, Their Friends, endure Their Correspondence, by William Poet Hazlitt, C. Scribner's Sons, 1897.
• Dream-Child: A Life of Charles Lamb by Eric G. Wilson, Altruist University Press, 2022.

External links