Lamb, Charles (b. Feb. 10, 1775, London— d. Dec. 27, 1834, Edmonton, Middlesex), 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 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 Wood WI, 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. The next year came a similarly conceived version of the Odyssey, called The Adventures of Ulysses, and in 1809 Mrs. Leicester’s School, a collection of stories supposedly told by pupils of a school in Hertfordshire. Concurrently with these collaborative works, Lamb published Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespear, a selection of scenes, much edited, from the Elizabethan drama. The Specimens included some passages of implicit criticism, and 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 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. It was the founding of the London Magazine in 1820 that gave birth to “Elia” and to Lamb’s greatest achievements in literature. 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. Lamb adopted the pseudonym “Elia” (the name of a fellow clerk) in order to spare the feelings of his elder brother, John, at that time a clerk in the South Sea house, which is the subject of the first essay. 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, recall scenes from childhood and from later life, indulge the author’s sense of playfulness and fancy, and avoid only whatever is urgent or disturbing: politics, suffering, sex, religion. The first essays were published separately in 1823; a second series appeared, as The Last Essays of Ella, 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. His sister outlived him by 13 years. The standard edition of the works of Charles and Mary Lamb, edited by E.V. Lucas, appeared in 7 volumes in 1903—05. The best available edition of the letters, edited by Lucas, appeared in 3 volumes in 1935. The standard biography, also by Lucas, was published in 1905 (rev. ed. 1921). There is valuable critical material in Charles Lamb and his Contempo,a,.jes (1933), by Edmund Blunden, and in English Literature, 1815—1832 (in vol. 10 of Oxford History of English Literature) (1963), by Ian Jack.


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