LAMB, CHARLES

born Feb. 10, 1775, London, Eng. died Dec. 27, 1834, Edmonton, Middlesex English essayist and critic, best-known for his series of miscellaneous Essays of Elia, but also among the greatest of English letter writers, and a perceptive literary critic. Lamb's father, a scrivener, acted as confidential clerk to Samuel Salt, a bencher of London's Inner Temple. The boy read avidly among Salt's books, and at the age of seven he went to school at Christ's Hospital, where he studied until 1789. He was a near contemporary there of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he began what was to be a lifelong friendship, and of Leigh Hunt. He was a good scholar and, but for a stutter, would probably have proceeded to holy orders. Instead, he left school just before the age of 15 and in 1792 found employment as a clerk at India House, remaining there until retirement in 1825. In 1796 Lamb's sister, Mary, in a fit of madness (which was to prove recurrent) killed their mother. Lamb reacted with courage and loyalty, taking on himself the burden of looking after Mary, and being rewarded by her affectionate devotion. Lamb's first appearances in print were as a poet, with contributions to collections by Coleridge (1796) and by Charles Lloyd (1798). A Tale of Rosamund Gray, a prose romance, appeared in 1798, and in 1802 he published John Woodvil, a poetic tragedy. None of these publications brought him much fame or fortune. The Old Familiar Faces (1789) remains his best-known poem, although On an Infant Dying As Soon As It Was Born (1828) is his finest poetic achievement. In 1807 Lamb and his sister published, at the invitation of William Godwin, Tales from Shakespear, a retelling of the plays for children, and in 1809 they published Mrs. Leicester's School, a collection of stories supposedly told by pupils of a school in Hertfordshire. In 1808 Charles published a children's version of the Odyssey, called The Adventures of Ulysses. Concurrently with these works, Lamb published Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespear, a selection of scenes, much-edited, from Elizabethan dramas. The book included some passages of implicit criticism. Lamb also contributed critical papers on Shakespeare and on Hogarth to Leigh Hunt's Reflector. The only lengthy piece of criticism that he undertook, on William Wordsworth's Excursion, was characteristically gelded by William Gifford, editor of the Quarterly Review, in which publication it appeared. Lamb's letters, however, contain much of his most perceptive criticism and reveal his personal tastes. The criticism often appears in the form of marginalia, reactions, and responses: brief comments, delicately phrased, but hardly ever argued through. Lamb's greatest achievements in prose were the essays that he wrote under the pseudonym Elia for London Magazine, which was founded in 1820. The essays are almost wholly autobiographical (though often he appropriated to himself the experiences of others). Many of the best deal with things half a century past: vistas revealed by an imagination looking back down the experiences of a lifetime. The subject of his first essay was the South Sea house, where his elder brother, John, was a clerk. In order to spare his brother's feelings, Lamb called himself Elia (the name of another clerk at the South Sea house). The persona of Elia predominates in nearly all of the essays. Lamb's style, therefore, is highly personal and mannered, its function being to create and delineate this persona, and the writing, though sometimes simple, is never plain. The essays conjure up, with humour and sometimes with pathos, old acquaintances such as Samuel Salt; they recall scenes from childhood and from later life, indulge the author's sense of playfulness and fancy, and avoid only whatever is urgent or disturbingpolitics, suffering, sex, religion. The first essays were published separately in 1823; a second series appeared, as The Last Essays of Elia, in 1833. After Lamb's retirement from the India House, a worsening of his sister's condition obliged the pair to move to Edmonton. This separation from the friends who gave him life and courage did not help his spirits. His tendency to drink too heavily became more pronounced. He died at Edmonton from complications to a wound suffered in a fall. The standard edition of the works of Charles and Mary Lamb, edited by E.V. Lucas, appeared in seven volumes in 190305. An edition of the letters, edited by Lucas, appeared in three volumes in 1935. A projected six-volume edition by Edwin W. Marrs, Jr., includes vol. 1, 17961801 (1975); vol. 2, 180109 (1976); vol. 3, 180917 (1978). Additional reading The standard biography is E.V. Lucas, The Life of Charles Lamb, 5th ed. rev., 2 vol. (1921, reprinted 1968). George L. Barnett, Charles Lamb (1976), is a shorter modern treatment. Roy Park (ed.), Lamb as Critic (1980), is an anthology of Lamb's critical writings and a reassessment of him as a critic.