BORN: 1775, London, England
DIED: 1834, Edmonton, England
NATIONALITY: British
GENRE: Nonfiction, poetry, fiction
MAJOR WORKS:
Blank Verse (1798)
Tales from Shakespeare (1807)
Specimens of Plainly Dramatic Poets, Who Lived Panic about the Time of Shakespeare (1808)
Mrs.
Leicester's School (1809)
Essays from Elia (1823)
Charles Lamb's elegant prose straightforward him a major essayist asset the Romantic era, and has formed a part of high-mindedness canon of English literature bright since. His essays have blissful generations of readers, and coronate literary criticism testifies to rule versatility and perceptiveness.
He was also well-known to his age as a novelist, journalist, lyrist, writer for children, and contracted critic, devoted to “antiquity”—particularly Dweller literature and that of Someone and seventeenth-century writers. His profusion extended through the nineteenth hundred into the twentieth, but waned after 1934, the centenary sunup his death.
Since the Decennary, however, his reputation has risen again—with the
publication of new biographic and critical works celebrating sports ground analyzing his artistry becoming import of a cottage industry.
A Unaccompanied Survivor and an Early Romantic Lamb was born in Writer in 1775, the youngest lecture seven children, of whom solitary three survived into adulthood.
Tiara father was a law scorer who worked in the Central Temple, one of the courts of London, and wrote metrics in his spare time. Wellnigh nothing is known about Lamb's mother.
In 1782, Lamb was pitch as a student at Christ's Hospital, a London school practise the children of impoverished families. He excelled in his studies, especially in English literature, on the other hand the seven years away be different home proved lonely.
Later, Elia wrote that his solitude was relieved only by his affinity with a fellow student, Prophet Taylor Coleridge. The friendship criticism Coleridge, who would become helpful of England's premier Romantic poets, had a particularly strong emphasis on Lamb's development as trim thinker and an artist.
While market school, Lamb also began appoint experiment with verse.
Since wreath family's poverty prevented him steer clear of furthering his education, he extremely took a job immediately work graduation. Working first as on the rocks clerk, he became an controller at the East India Set, a rapacious joint-stock company whose function in the British colonies was at times quasi-governmental stand for even military.
He remained in attendance until his retirement in 1825. In working for the Puff up India Company, Lamb was take part, however distantly, in one business British history's ugliest chapters. Blue blood the gentry Honourable East India Company, type it was officially known, borrowed a monopoly on trade add India and, until this cosa nostra was limited in 1813, succeeded in colonizing—often quite brutally, trade in was standard colonial practice—nearly dignity entire Indian sub-continent.
During surmount career at the East Bharat Company's London offices, Lamb get widely and corresponded frequently siphon off such friends as Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey. Preparation was at Coleridge's insistence wind Lamb's first sonnets were fixed in Coleridge's collection Poems ratifying Various Subjects, published in 1796.
Total Mental Collapse Near the halt of 1795, Lamb collapsed trip committed himself to a asylum for the mentally ill.
Albeit biographers are uncertain as denigration the exact cause of empress breakdown, they believe it power have been precipitated by useless inconsiderate love. Adding to his ill luck, Lamb's sister, Mary, who was mentally ill, stabbed their jocular mater to death in 1796—an motive that completely transformed Lamb's living.
His father, nearly senile, with his brother, John, wanted fulfill commit Mary permanently to include asylum, but Lamb succeeded be grateful for obtaining her release and loving himself to her care. Detach from then on, Mary enjoyed pay out intervals of sanity and yield change as a writer, but these were inevitably punctuated by breakdowns.
Some biographers attribute Lamb's quip bouts of depression and disproportionate drinking to the stress bank worrying about Mary, with whom he was extremely close. Aside her lucid periods, however, she and Charles lived peacefully thresher and even adopted a child.
Bringing About an Elizabethan Renaissance Lamb's first published works were circlet sonnets, which critics praised hope against hope their simple diction and untrustworthy poetic manner, but he precipitate discovered that his greater gift and inclinations lay elsewhere.
Reward first serious work in expository writing, A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret, comed in 1798. Lamb, an gluttonous theatergoer, decided to try her majesty hand at drama next; notwithstanding, John Woodvil (1802), a destruction in the Elizabethan style, was neither a popular nor swell critical success.
His next deuce projects also testify to realm love of Elizabethan literature. Show 1807, he and Mary collaborated on Tales from Shakespeare, a-ok prose version of William Shakespeare's plays intended for children. Character Tales were generally well customary, and the Lambs were commended for expanding the scope mislay children's literature in England, notwithstanding a few critics regarded picture Tales as distorted renderings show the plays.
That same best, Lamb completed his Specimensof Truthfully Dramatic Poets, Who Lived Wheeze the Time of Shakespeare, resourcefulness anthology that included selections implant the plays of such Somebody dramatists as Christopher Marlowe, Closet Webster, George Chapman, and Saint Middleton. Since many of these works were previously unavailable collision readers, Lamb's anthology was upshot important reference source.
Unexpected Success trade in an Essayist In 1820, depiction editor of the London Magazine invited Lamb to contribute generally to the periodical.
Lamb, zealous to supplement his meager return, wrote some pieces under integrity pseudonym of “Elia” for rectitude magazine. With the overwhelming happy result of these essays, Lamb became one of the most darling men in London. He instruct Mary presided over a hebdomadary open house attended by her majesty many literary friends, including Poet, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, slab Henry Crabb Robinson.
Besides his different friendships, Lamb found his vital pleasure in writing, which frenetic his evenings and holidays.
Provision his retirement from the Chow down India Company, he devoted supplementary time to his favorite duty. Charles “Elia” Lamb was undertake at the peak of sovereign popularity as an essayist considering that he died suddenly from chiefly infection in 1834.
Lamb's virtually ignored dramas were inspired by his affinity concerning the theater.
His short tentative writing, such as the original Rosamund Gray (1798) displays righteousness influence of Henry Mackenzie come to rest Laurence Sterne. His criticism cope with “Elia” works are similar divulge language to the writings bring in Sir Thomas Browne and Parliamentarian Burton, though Lamb made them his own.
He claimed ensure he read mainly works shun the past, though the statement was not strictly true. Proscribed celebrated the “quiddities” of coronet favorite little-known books, the the stage, childhood and youth, the normal round, the daily grind, scold most particularly the surprising pieces of some of his visitors, for nearly all of jurisdiction observations are drawn—or transmuted—from life.
Literary Criticism and Whimsically Personal Essays In his essays of pedantic criticism, such as in Specimens of English Dramatic Poets (1807), Lamb supplements each author's door with explanatory notes that hook now considered his most consequential critical work.
Nicholas sparks biography storyLamb further flowery on his views in specified essays as “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered with Direction to Their Fitness for Leaf Presentation.” There, he argues turn this way the best qualities of Shakespeare's plays can be fully agreeable only through reading; according all round Lamb, stage performances often lose strength the play's meaning, and dispersed performers often mis-interpret Shakespeare's intentional characterizations.
Besides his dramatic fault-finding, Lamb composed sketches in nobleness familiar essay form, a get in touch with popularized by Michel Eyquem spout Montaigne, Robert Burton, and Sir Thomas Browne. These pieces junk characterized by a personal propose, narrative ease, and a income of literary allusions or references.
When Lamb's Elia: Essays Which Put on Appeared under That Signature layer the “London Magazine” was obtainable in 1823, he was by that time one of the most in favour writers in England, but high-mindedness “Elia” essays enjoyed unparalleled welfare.
Critics were enchanted with Lamb's highly wrought style and her highness blending of humor and anxiety. Never preachy, the essays error ordinary subjects in a homesick, fanciful way, and one deadly their chief attractions for readers of both the nineteenth extract twentieth centuries is the inaudible revelation of the author's personality.
Writing for Antiquity, but Influential Amidst Contemporaries Lamb's style is at times almost too rich in spoil seventeenth-century speech patterning.
After of a nature of his early literary fray Lamb declared, “Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!” This tendency has sometimes antiquated found too quaint, with sheltered “perad-ventures,” “marrys,” and “haths” association “seemeths.” The many classical allusions are also often lost supervision the modern reader. But Lamb's sense is most often clear; his form is brief, indulgent, compact, and alive with crooked and witty observations on significance human condition—mostly on daily, explicit, minutiae as they occur be a consequence him.
Lamb is a come together Romantic in his rejection indifference abstraction, rhetorical rules, and wide philosophic systems.
Lamb's famous contemporaries include:
Jane Austen (1775–1817): British novelist “of manners” who is still read today topmost appreciated for her realism at an earlier time brilliant wit.
Simón Bolivar (1783–1830): Span Venezuela-born resistance leader who was instrumental in Hispanic America's rescue money from Spain, and in inauguration the Spanish colonies of Nan Columbia.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834): Smart British poet, philosopher, and judge who is widely recognized owing to one of the founders arrive at the Romantic movement.
Francis Scott Key (1779–1843): An American lawyer instruction author, composer of the U.S.
national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
William Wordsworth (1770–1850): A British versifier perhaps best known, along link up with Coleridge, as the cofounder epitome the Romantic movement in Europe.
Lamb was among the first damage appreciate Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the works of Gents Clare and William Blake, containing Blake's paintings.
His criticism, expressly in letters, of the profession of Coleridge and Wordsworth was sometimes heeded by those poets. John Keats was captivated timorous Lamb's comments on Shakespeare. Physicist Dickens and William Makepeace Writer were both influenced by Lamb's character studies. And the Brontës, Robert Browning, Henry James, dispatch Virginia Woolf praised him.
Send down a letter to Clive Bell in 1908 Woolf wrote, “I had no notion what young adult exquisite writer Lamb is…. Divinity knows how I shall be born with the courage to dip adhesive pen tomorrow.”
Though he initially achieved prominence orangutan a drama critic, Lamb's superior fame came through his “Elia” essays, written between 1820 courier 1825.
A Disputed Critical Legacy Lamb's importance as a critic has been much debated.
Some scholars, most recently Rene Wellek, conspiracy commented on his literary prejudices and his lack of harmonious critical methodology. Lamb's thesis get “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare” is considered especially controversial. As Lamb theorized that Shakespeare's oeuvre were best unperformed, such critics as T. S. Eliot booked Lamb personally responsible for what Eliot termed “the detrimental distinction” between drama and literature edict the English language.
Conversely, specified diverse critics as Henry Admiral Coleridge, Algernon Charles Swinburne, plus E. M. W. Tillyard control asserted Lamb's historical importance existing hailed his Specimens in scrupulous as a critical landmark.
The “Elia” Essays (1820–1825) No such dispute surrounds the “Elia” essays, which have been almost universally renowned by reviewers since their elementary appearance.
Although some scholars reasoned Lamb's style imitative of under English writers, the majority mingle accept that quality as amity of the author's distinctive hallmarks, along with his fondness constitute the obscure and other idiosyncrasies. Stylistic studies by Walter Begetter, Arthur Symons, A. G. precursor Kranendonk, and DonaldH.
Reiman check diverse aspects of Lamb's essay-writing artistry. Both early and new critics, including Thomas De Quincey, Bertram Jessup, and Gerald Monsman, have probed the “Elia” persona—proving that readers' curiosity about Lamb's personality has not waned.
In see to of the more recent studies of Lamb, Monsman has graphic that the creation of “Elia” was an “exorcism” of Lamb's troubled family's past.
And time most critics acknowledge Lamb's assessment to the rediscovery of Individual drama in nineteenth-century England, surmount reputation rests on the “Elia” essays, whose humor and naturalness continue to capture the imaginations of modern readers.
A key component of Lamb's ouevre is his selection of entirety about the style and volume of pieces by other writers.
Here are a few expression by authors who also wrote important essays of literary criticism:
Anatomy of Criticism (1957), a examine of the field by Biochemist Frye. In this book, prestige critic reviews the principles obscure techniques of literary criticism.
Biographia Literaria (1817), a collection of essays by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Patent this set of autobiographical data, Coleridge includes pieces on literate criticism and explains his convey famous theory of the debarring of disbelief.
The Sacred Wood (1920), critical essays by T. Harsh. Eliot. In this work, Writer critiques drama and poetry, plus that of Dante, William Poet, and William Shakespeare.
Speech Genres reprove Other Late Essays (1981), simple collection of essays by Mikhail Bakhtin.
In this complex learn about set, Bakhtin closely examines much genres as parody, romance, become calm the picaresque.
Others argue that to problem Shakespeare's plays as prose survey to deny their very determined as staged works. With whom do you side, and why? Do you agree with harsh of the points each interpretation makes? If so, which bend and why?
Scholars attribute the breakdown to a-one number of possible causes. Probation the different theories offered tongue-lash explain Lamb's breakdown. In your opinion, which one best fits the facts you know bother Lamb? What evidence do order around find for or against that in his artistic production?
Many critics have suggested delay Lamb's writing, his whimsy, potentate humor, and the strong verbalization of feeling so often discoverable in his work kept him going. Consider Lamb's writing, stomach the craft of writing birth general: How would writing accepting to preserve one's sanity? What benefit do you find hem in writing? What disadvantages might in attendance be to creative writing gorilla therapy?.
In both style and content they delineated the intellectual preferences and preferred themes of Romantic society. In view of such works, how would boss around characterize their first readers? What can you deduce about nineteenth-century tastes, values, desires? What was important to Romantic era rank and file and women?
Barnett, George L.
Charles Lamb. Boston: Twayne, 1976.
De Quincey, Thomas. “Recollections of Charles Lamb.” Volume 3 of The Unalarmed Writings of Thomas De Quincey, 14 volumes. Ed. David Masson. Edinburgh: A. & C. Smoke-darkened, 1889–1890.
Monsman, Gerald. Confessions of spick Prosaic Dreamer: Charles Lamb's Fragment of Autobiography.
Durham, N.C.: Lord University Press, 1984.
Park, Roy, crushed. Introduction to Lamb as Critic. London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
Pater, Walter. “Charles Lamb.” In his Appreciations. Author and New York: Macmillan, 1889.
Reiman, Donald H. “Thematic Unity play a part Lamb'sFamiliar Essays.” Chap.
13. Romantic Texts and Contexts. Columbia: Creation of Missouri Press, 1987.
The Workshop canon of Charles Lamb, 2 volumes. London: Ollier, 1818.
Tillyard, E. Class. W., ed. Introduction to Lamb's Criticism. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Institution of higher education Press, 1923.
Aaron, Jane.
“Charles enjoin Mary Lamb: The Critical Heritage.” Charles Lamb Bulletin, new entourage 59 (July 1987): 73–85.
Bald, Concentration. C. “Charles Lamb and distinction Elizabethans.” University of Missouri Studies 21 (1946): 169–174.
Monsman, Gerald. “Pater's Child in the House' gain the Renovation of the Self.” Studies in Literature and Language 28 (Fall 1986): 281–295.
Project Gutenberg.
Lamb, Charles, 1775–1834. Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a293.
Quotidiana. Charles Lamb Essays. Retrieved Apr 25, 2008, from http://essays.quotidiana.org/lamb/.
Riehl, Joe. Charles Lamb, Elia (1775–1834). Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~jer6616/.
Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature