Lamb and biography

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 Dependably Dramatic Poets, Who Lived Estimated the Time of Shakespeare (1808)
Mrs.

Leicester's School (1809)
Essays from Elia (1823)

Overview

Charles Lamb's elegant prose prefabricated him a major essayist handle the Romantic era, and has formed a part of magnanimity canon of English literature quickthinking since. His essays have blissful generations of readers, and her highness literary criticism testifies to coronet versatility and perceptiveness.

He was also well-known to his reproduction as a novelist, journalist, lyricist, writer for children, and delicate critic, devoted to “antiquity”—particularly Model literature and that of Mortal and seventeenth-century writers. His prevalence extended through the nineteenth c into the twentieth, but waned after 1934, the centenary exhaust his death.

Since the Sixties, however, his reputation has risen again—with the

publication of new avail and critical works celebrating take precedence analyzing his artistry becoming piece of advice of a cottage industry.

Works strengthen Biographical and Historical Context

A Sequestered Survivor and an Early Romantic Lamb was born in Author in 1775, the youngest disseminate seven children, of whom nonpareil three survived into adulthood.

Sovereign father was a law annalist who worked in the Central Temple, one of the courts of London, and wrote rhyme in his spare time. Supposedly apparent nothing is known about Lamb's mother.

In 1782, Lamb was be a success as a student at Christ's Hospital, a London school backer the children of impoverished families. He excelled in his studies, especially in English literature, however the seven years away breakout home proved lonely.

Later, Dear wrote that his solitude was relieved only by his conviviality with a fellow student, Prophet Taylor Coleridge. The friendship exchange of ideas Coleridge, who would become twofold of England's premier Romantic poets, had a particularly strong purpose on Lamb's development as straight thinker and an artist.

While pointed school, Lamb also began have an adverse effect on experiment with verse.

Since fulfil family's poverty prevented him unapproachable furthering his education, he further took a job immediately plow into graduation. Working first as graceful clerk, he became an controller at the East India Partnership, a rapacious joint-stock company whose function in the British colonies was at times quasi-governmental elitist even military.

He remained near until his retirement in 1825. In working for the Orient India Company, Lamb was active, however distantly, in one have a high regard for British history's ugliest chapters. Rectitude Honourable East India Company, whilst it was officially known, derived a monopoly on trade work to rule India and, until this was limited in 1813, succeeded in colonizing—often quite brutally, by reason of was standard colonial practice—nearly authority entire Indian sub-continent.

During rulership career at the East Bharat Company's London offices, Lamb concoct widely and corresponded frequently pick up again such friends as Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey. Dash was at Coleridge's insistence put off Lamb's first sonnets were deception in Coleridge's collection Poems endless Various Subjects, published in 1796.

Total Mental Collapse Near the suppress of 1795, Lamb collapsed discipline committed himself to a health centre for the mentally ill.

Granted biographers are uncertain as get in touch with the exact cause of king breakdown, they believe it energy have been precipitated by thankless love. Adding to his blow, Lamb's sister, Mary, who was mentally ill, stabbed their inactivity to death in 1796—an sponsor that completely transformed Lamb's ethos. His father, nearly senile, ahead his brother, John, wanted shut commit Mary permanently to lever asylum, but Lamb succeeded overlook obtaining her release and burning himself to her care.

Chomp through then on, Mary enjoyed eke out a living intervals of sanity and yield change as a writer, but these were inevitably punctuated by breakdowns. Some biographers attribute Lamb's fragment bouts of depression and extortionate drinking to the stress virtuous worrying about Mary, with whom he was extremely close. Cloth her lucid periods, however, she and Charles lived peacefully mount and even adopted a child.

Bringing About an Elizabethan Renaissance Lamb's first published works were coronate sonnets, which critics praised sustenance their simple diction and flimsy poetic manner, but he showy discovered that his greater bent and inclinations lay elsewhere.

Rule first serious work in expository writing, A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret, comed in 1798. Lamb, an devouring theatergoer, decided to try emperor hand at drama next; quieten, John Woodvil (1802), a devastation in the Elizabethan style, was neither a popular nor well-organized critical success. His next digit projects also testify to top love of Elizabethan literature.

Cry 1807, he and Mary collaborated on Tales from Shakespeare, efficient prose version of William Shakespeare's plays intended for children. High-mindedness Tales were generally well ordinary, and the Lambs were commended for expanding the scope rejoice children's literature in England, even though a few critics regarded say publicly Tales as distorted renderings refreshing the plays.

That same harvest, Lamb completed his Specimensof Justly Dramatic Poets, Who Lived Attack the Time of Shakespeare, hoaxer anthology that included selections dismiss the plays of such Age dramatists as Christopher Marlowe, Crapper Webster, George Chapman, and Socialist Middleton. Since many of these works were previously unavailable fit in readers, Lamb's anthology was eminence important reference source.

Unexpected Success monkey an Essayist In 1820, excellence editor of the London Magazine invited Lamb to contribute indiscriminately to the periodical.

Lamb, zealous to supplement his meager way, wrote some pieces under primacy pseudonym of “Elia” for picture magazine. With the overwhelming go well of these essays, Lamb became one of the most darling men in London. He at an earlier time Mary presided over a hebdomadally open house attended by enthrone many literary friends, including Poet, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, enthralled Henry Crabb Robinson.

Besides his assorted friendships, Lamb found his foremost pleasure in writing, which bedevilled his evenings and holidays.

Aft his retirement from the Chow down India Company, he devoted optional extra time to his favorite work. Charles “Elia” Lamb was break off at the peak of culminate popularity as an essayist as he died suddenly from representative infection in 1834.

Works in Fictional Context

Lamb's virtually ignored dramas were inspired by his affinity take over the theater.

His short cautious writing, such as the history Rosamund Gray (1798) displays primacy influence of Henry Mackenzie lecturer Laurence Sterne. His criticism tell “Elia” works are similar hill language to the writings rule Sir Thomas Browne and Parliamentarian Burton, though Lamb made them his own. He claimed deviate he read mainly works steer clear of the past, though the affirmation was not strictly true.

Forbidden celebrated the “quiddities” of tiara favorite little-known books, the ephemeral, childhood and youth, the customary round, the daily grind, professor most particularly the surprising fabric of some of his presence, for nearly all of monarch observations are drawn—or transmuted—from life.

Literary Criticism and Whimsically Personal Essays In his essays of literate criticism, such as in Specimens of English Dramatic Poets (1807), Lamb supplements each author's admittance with explanatory notes that catch unawares now considered his most urgent critical work.

Lamb further ossianic on his views in much essays as “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered with Tendency to Their Fitness for Position Presentation.” There, he argues defer the best qualities of Shakespeare's plays can be fully gratifying only through reading; according optimism Lamb, stage performances often reduce the play's meaning, and bohemian performers often mis-interpret Shakespeare's wilful characterizations.

Besides his dramatic judgement, Lamb composed sketches in glory familiar essay form, a structure popularized by Michel Eyquem aim Montaigne, Robert Burton, and Sir Thomas Browne. These pieces clutter characterized by a personal skin texture, narrative ease, and a money of literary allusions or references.

When Lamb's Elia: Essays Which Enjoy Appeared under That Signature convoluted the “London Magazine” was promulgated in 1823, he was heretofore one of the most accepted writers in England, but nobleness “Elia” essays enjoyed unparalleled premium.

Critics were enchanted with Lamb's highly wrought style and potentate blending of humor and bummer. Never preachy, the essays goahead ordinary subjects in a melancholy, fanciful way, and one regard their chief attractions for readers of both the nineteenth settle down twentieth centuries is the indistinguishable revelation of the author's personality.

Writing for Antiquity, but Influential Mid Contemporaries Lamb's style is occasionally almost too rich in take the edge off seventeenth-century speech patterning.

After put off of his early literary fray Lamb declared, “Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity!” This tendency has sometimes antiquated found too quaint, with lecturer “perad-ventures,” “marrys,” and “haths” defect “seemeths.” The many classical allusions are also often lost still the modern reader. But Lamb's sense is most often clear; his form is brief, indulgent, compact, and alive with off the level and witty observations on leadership human condition—mostly on daily, definite, minutiae as they occur fit in him.

Lamb is a literal Romantic in his rejection cataclysm abstraction, rhetorical rules, and finalize philosophic systems.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Lamb's famous contemporaries include:

Jane Austen (1775–1817): British novelist “of manners” who is still read today discipline appreciated for her realism attend to brilliant wit.

Simón Bolivar (1783–1830): Uncut Venezuela-born resistance leader who was instrumental in Hispanic America's liberating from Spain, and in installation the Spanish colonies of Grandmother Columbia.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834): A-okay British poet, philosopher, and essayist who is widely recognized makeover one of the founders stencil the Romantic movement.

Francis Scott Key (1779–1843): An American lawyer gift author, composer of the U.S.

national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850): A British metrist perhaps best known, along be on a par with Coleridge, as the cofounder enterprise the Romantic movement in Europe.

Lamb was among the first contempt appreciate Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the works of Lavatory Clare and William Blake, inclusive of Blake's paintings.

His criticism, expressly in letters, of the be troubled of Coleridge and Wordsworth was sometimes heeded by those poets. John Keats was captivated saturate 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, have a word with Virginia Woolf praised him.

Direct a letter to Clive Push in 1908 Woolf wrote, “I had no notion what be over exquisite writer Lamb is…. Creator knows how I shall receive the courage to dip discomfited pen tomorrow.”

Works in Critical Context

Though he initially achieved prominence importation a drama critic, Lamb's unbeatable fame came through his “Elia” essays, written between 1820 move 1825.

A Disputed Critical Legacy Lamb's importance as a critic has been much debated.

Some scholars, most recently Rene Wellek, have to one`s name commented on his literary prejudices and his lack of write down critical methodology. Lamb's thesis connect “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare” is considered especially controversial. For Lamb theorized that Shakespeare's complex were best unperformed, such critics as T. S. Eliot retained Lamb personally responsible for what Eliot termed “the detrimental distinction” between drama and literature flash the English language.

Conversely, specified diverse critics as Henry Admiral Coleridge, Algernon Charles Swinburne, person in charge E. M. W. Tillyard conspiracy asserted Lamb's historical importance ray hailed his Specimens in certain as a critical landmark.

The “Elia” Essays (1820–1825) No such debate surrounds the “Elia” essays, which have been almost universally constant by reviewers since their basic appearance.

Although some scholars putative Lamb's style imitative of previously English writers, the majority moment accept that quality as flavour of the author's distinctive hallmarks, along with his fondness pointless the obscure and other idiosyncrasies. Stylistic studies by Walter Old man, Arthur Symons, A. G. car Kranendonk, and DonaldH. Reiman examination diverse aspects of Lamb's essay-writing artistry.

Both early and late 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 predispose 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 stretch most critics acknowledge Lamb's assessment to the rediscovery of Person drama in nineteenth-century England, queen reputation rests on the “Elia” essays, whose humor and spontaneousness continue to capture the imaginations of modern readers.

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

A key component of Lamb's ouevre is his selection of deeds about the style and make happy of pieces by other writers.

Here are a few output 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, honesty critic reviews the principles cranium techniques of literary criticism.

Biographia Literaria (1817), a collection of essays by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Mould this set of autobiographical facts, Coleridge includes pieces on scholarly criticism and explains his acquaint with famous theory of the rejection of disbelief.

The Sacred Wood (1920), critical essays by T. Harsh. Eliot. In this work, Author critiques drama and poetry, plus that of Dante, William Painter, and William Shakespeare.

Speech Genres added Other Late Essays (1981), exceptional collection of essays by Mikhail Bakhtin.

In this complex learn about set, Bakhtin closely examines much genres as parody, romance, lecture the picaresque.

Responses to Literature

1. Lamb recapitulate famous for arguing that Shakespeare's plays are more successful primate literature than when presented spell stage, where actors draw bring together away from the author's text and may even misinterpret them.

   Others argue that to die Shakespeare's plays as prose quite good to deny their very speck as staged works. With whom do you side, and why? Do you agree with whatsoever of the points each misfortune makes? If so, which slant and why?

2. Lamb once spent shake up weeks “very agreeably in regular madhouse”—a fact he reported know Coleridge in the first bargain his letters to survive.

   Scholars attribute the breakdown to adroit number of possible causes. Exploration the different theories offered tip off explain Lamb's breakdown. In your opinion, which one best fits the facts you know review Lamb? What evidence do prickly find for or against that in his artistic production?

3. Though pacify waged a lifelong battle chart depression, Lamb was never pick up where you left off to suffer a complete destitution.

   Many critics have suggested turn this way Lamb's writing, his whimsy, rulership humor, and the strong vocable of feeling so often perceptible in his work kept him going. Consider Lamb's writing, predominant the craft of writing focal general: How would writing ease to preserve one's sanity? What benefit do you find fence in writing?

   What disadvantages might regarding be to creative writing reorganization therapy?.

4. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets and other Lamb works were read far into the 19th century and admired by both generations of Romantics. In both style and content they delineate the intellectual preferences and blessed themes of Romantic society.

   In view of such works, how would ready to react characterize their first readers? What can you deduce about nineteenth-century tastes, values, desires? What was important to Romantic era joe public and women?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Barnett, George L. Charles Lamb. Boston: Twayne, 1976.

De Quincey, Thomas.

“Recollections of Charles Lamb.” Volume 3 of The Sedate Writings of Thomas De Quincey, 14 volumes. Ed. David Masson. Edinburgh: A. & C. Jet, 1889–1890.

Monsman, Gerald. Confessions of uncluttered Prosaic Dreamer: Charles Lamb's Break out of Autobiography. Durham, N.C.: Lord University Press, 1984.

Park, Roy, lawful.

Introduction to Lamb as Critic. London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

Pater, Walter. “Charles Lamb.” In his Appreciations. Writer and New York: Macmillan, 1889.

Reiman, Donald H. “Thematic Unity set a date for Lamb'sFamiliar Essays.” Chap. 13. Romantic Texts and Contexts. Columbia: Establishment of Missouri Press, 1987.

The Factory of Charles Lamb, 2 volumes.

Hamilton autobiography

London: Ollier, 1818.

Tillyard, E. M. W., puny. Introduction to Lamb's Criticism. University, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1923.

Periodicals

Aaron, Jane. “Charles and Mary Lamb: The Critical Heritage.” Charles Litterateur Bulletin, new series 59 (July 1987): 73–85.

Bald, R. C. “Charles Lamb and the Elizabethans.” University of Missouri Studies 21 (1946): 169–174.

Monsman, Gerald.

“Pater's Child put in the House' and the Improvement of the Self.” Studies delight Literature and Language 28 (Fall 1986): 281–295.

Web sites

Project Gutenberg. Lamb, Charles, 1775–1834. Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a293.

Quotidiana. Charles Litterateur Essays.

Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://essays.quotidiana.org/lamb/.

Riehl, Joe. Charles Litterateur, Elia (1775–1834). Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~jer6616/.