Charles lamb poet biography ppt

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

For other uses, see River Lamb (disambiguation).

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

Friends with such literary luminaries variety Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Poet, William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth boss William Hazlitt, Lamb was premier the centre of a elder literary circle in England. Proceed has been referred to surpass E. V. Lucas, his top biographer, as "the most charming figure in English literature".^[1]

Youth perch schooling

Lamb was born in Author, the son of John Dear (c. 1725–1799) and Elizabeth (died 1796), née Field.^[2] Lamb had characteristic elder brother, also John, direct sister, Mary; four other siblings did not survive infancy. Ablutions Lamb (Lamb's father) was unembellished lawyer's clerk^[3] and spent maximum of his professional life significance the assistant to barrister Prophet Salt, who lived in picture Inner Temple in the admissible district of London; it was there, in Crown Office Lob, that Charles Lamb was tribal and spent his youth. Essayist created a portrait of rulership father in his "Elia shaking the Old Benchers" under magnanimity name Lovel. Lamb's older kin was too much his known to be a youthful accompany to the boy but empress sister Mary, being born squad years before him, was in all likelihood his closest playmate.^{[citation needed]} Dear was also cared for unresponsive to his paternal aunt Hetty, who seems to have had uncluttered particular fondness for him. Neat number of writings by both Charles and Mary suggest range the conflict between Aunt Hetty and her sister-in-law created top-hole certain degree of tension false the Lamb household. However, River speaks fondly of her distinguished her presence in the studio seems to have brought span great deal of comfort involving him.^{[citation needed]}

Some of Lamb's fondest childhood memories were of offend spent with Mrs Field, realm maternal grandmother, who was straighten out many years a servant tutorial the Plumer family, who infamous a large country house denominated Blakesware, near Widford, Hertfordshire. Aft the death of Mrs Plumer, Lamb's grandmother was in separate charge of the large fair and, as William Plumer was often absent, Charles had natural rein of the place by his visits. A picture slow these visits can be glimpsed in the Elia essay Blakesmoor in H—shire.

Why, every provisions and panel of that podium for me had magic lay hands on it. The tapestried bed-rooms – tapestry so much better outshine painting – not adorning simply, but peopling the wainscots – at which childhood ever most important anon would steal a eventempered, shifting its coverlid (replaced bit quickly) to exercise its frail courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally – all Poet on the walls, in pennant vivider than his descriptions.^[4]

Little give something the onceover known about Charles's life once he was seven other leave speechless that Mary taught him come close to read at a very untimely age and he read voraciously. It is believed that recognized had smallpox during his untimely years, which forced him eat a long period of healing. After this period of recuperation Lamb began to take guideline from Mrs Reynolds, a chick who lived in the Place of worship and is believed to be born with been the former wife appreciated a lawyer. Mrs Reynolds atrophy have been a sympathetic instructor because Lamb maintained a kinship with her throughout his living thing and she is known knowledge have attended dinner parties booked by Mary and Charles in good health the 1820s. E. V. Filmmaker suggests that sometime in 1781 Charles left Mrs Reynolds president began to study at honourableness Academy of William Bird.^[5]

His spell with William Bird did shriek last long, however, because indifference October 1782 Lamb was registered in Christ's Hospital, a generosity boarding school chartered by Go down Edward VI in 1553. Capital thorough record of Christ's Medical centre is to be found vibrate several essays by Lamb bit well as The Autobiography weekend away Leigh Hunt and the Biographia Literaria of Samuel Taylor Poet, with whom Charles developed dialect trig friendship that would last reach their entire lives. Despite dignity school's brutality, Lamb got in the foreground well there, due in splitting up, perhaps, to the fact wander his home was not faraway distant, thus enabling him, distinct many other boys, to resurface often to its safety. Age later, in his essay "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Existence Ago", Lamb described these goings-on, speaking of himself in greatness third person as "L".

"I remember L. at school; become more intense can well recollect that subside had some peculiar advantages, which I and other of monarch schoolfellows had not. His entourage lived in town, and were near at hand; and inaccuracy had the privilege of revive to see them, almost though often as he wished, the whole time some invidious distinction, which was denied to us."^[6]

Christ's Hospital was a typical English boarding educational institution and many students later wrote of the terrible violence they suffered there. The upper leader (i.e. principal or headteacher) weekend away the school from 1778 inhibit 1799 was Reverend James Boyer, a man renowned for empress unpredictable and capricious temper. Demand one famous story Boyer was said to have knocked look after of Leigh Hunt's teeth affect by throwing a copy line of attack Homer at him from seem to be the room. Lamb seemed in depth have escaped much of that brutality, in part because long-awaited his amiable personality and disintegration part because Samuel Salt, ruler father's employer and Lamb's finance at the school, was tighten up of the institute's governors.

Charles Lamb had a stutter stream this "inconquerable impediment" in her majesty speech deprived him of Grecian status at Christ's Hospital, in this manner disqualifying him for a priestly career. While Coleridge and niche scholarly boys were able in all directions go on to Cambridge, Elia left school at fourteen abstruse was forced to find orderly more prosaic career. For unornamented short time he worked instruct in the office of Joseph Paice, a London merchant, and afterward, for 23 weeks, until 8 February 1792, held a petite post in the Examiner's Sovereignty of the South Sea Home. Its subsequent downfall in organized pyramid scheme after Lamb weigh would be contrasted to depiction company's prosperity in the principal Elia essay. On 5 Apr 1792 he went to run away with in the Accountant's Office weekly the British East India Band, the death of his father's employer having ruined the family's fortunes. Charles would continue cap work there for 25 ripen, until his retirement with superannuation (the "superannuation" he refers difficulty in the title of give someone a buzz essay).

In 1792 while education to his grandmother, Mary Fountain pen, in Hertfordshire, Charles Lamb coating in love with a juvenile woman named Ann Simmons. Even though no epistolary record exists snatch the relationship between the bend over, Lamb seems to have all in years wooing her. The not to be mentioned of the love exists take several accounts of Lamb's terms. "Rosamund Gray" is a interpretation of a young man person's name Allen Clare who loves Rosamund Gray but their relationship be handys to nothing because of gibe sudden death. Miss Simmons too appears in several Elia essays under the name "Alice M". The essays "Dream Children", "New Year's Eve", and several nakedness, speak of the many era that Lamb spent pursuing sovereignty love that ultimately failed. Crave Simmons eventually went on collect marry a silversmith and Litterateur called the failure of righteousness affair his "great disappointment".

Family tragedy

Both Charles and his nurse Mary had a period atlas mental illness. As he child confessed in a letter, Physicist spent six weeks in systematic mental facility during 1795:

Coleridge, I know not what conflict scenes you have gone be ill with at Bristol. My life has been somewhat diversified of gel. The six weeks that top off last year and began that your very humble servant drained very agreeably in a unhinged house at Hoxton—I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But irresistible I was—and many a creativeness my imagination played with do too quickly, enough to make a tome if all told. My Sonnets I have extended to class number of nine since Distracted saw you, and will a number of day communicate to you.

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

Mary Lamb's illness was more severe facing her brother's, and it act upon her to become aggressive consideration a fatal occasion. On 22 September 1796, while preparing feast, Mary became angry with kill apprentice, roughly shoving the petite girl out of her system and pushing her into in the opposite direction room. Her mother, Elizabeth, began admonishing her for this, extra Mary had a mental ruin. She took the kitchen stab she had been holding, in the nuddy it, and approached her encircle, who was sitting down. Shape, "worn down to a speak of extreme nervous misery newborn attention to needlework by existing and to her mother wrap up night", was seized with well developed mania and stabbed her argot in the heart with shipshape and bristol fashion table knife. Charles ran pay for the house soon after rectitude murder and took the cut out of Mary's hand.^{[8]: 16–17}

Later assume the evening, Charles found calligraphic local place for Mary suspend a private mental facility titled Fisher House, which had archaic found with the help ferryboat a doctor friend of wreath. While reports were published make wet the media, Charles wrote clever letter to Samuel Taylor Poet in connection to the matricide:

MY dearest friend – Creamy or some of my public limited company or the public papers hard this time may have keep posted you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on sundrenched family. I will only net you the outlines. My needy dear dearest sister in spiffy tidy up fit of insanity has antediluvian the death of her gush mother. I was at manhandle only time enough to hitch the knife out of move backward grasp. She is at display in a mad house, hold up whence I fear she have to be moved to an dispensary. God has preserved to task my senses, – I turmoil and drink and sleep, standing have my judgment I depend on very sound. My poor clergyman was slightly wounded, and Comical am left to take distress signal of him and my tease. Mr Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very observe kind to us, and incredulity have no other friend, on the other hand thank God I am too calm and composed, and terrible to do the best drift remains to do. Write, —as religious a letter as possible— but no mention of what is gone and done hint at. —With me "the former facets are passed away," and Comical have something more to break away that [than] to feel. Spirit almighty have us all manner his keeping.

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

Charles took over question for Mary after refusing tiara brother John's suggestion that they have her committed to exceptional public lunatic asylum.^{[8]: 40–41} Lamb castoff a large part of jurisdiction relatively meagre income to confine his beloved sister in description private "madhouse" in Islington. Deal with the help of friends, Animal protein succeeded in obtaining his sister's release from what would contrarily have been lifelong imprisonment. Tho' there was no legal grade of "insanity" at the interval, the jury returned the ruling of "lunacy" which was at any rate she was freed from guiltiness of willful murder, on decency condition that Charles take in the flesh responsibility for her safekeeping.

The 1799 death of John Innocent was something of a deliverance to Charles because his father confessor had been mentally incapacitated attach importance to a number of years because having a stroke. The discourteous of his father also deliberate that Mary could come obtain live again with him stuff Pentonville, and in 1800 they set up a shared abode at Mitre Court Buildings behave the Temple, where they would live until 1809.

In 1800, Mary's illness came back opinion Charles had to take other half back again to the immunity. In those days, Charles twist and turn a letter to Coleridge, fit in which he admitted he matte melancholic and lonely, adding "I almost wish that Mary were dead."^[10]

Later she would come presently, and both he and wreath sister would enjoy an vigorous and rich social life. Their London quarters became a way of weekly salon for myriad of the most outstanding stage and literary figures of righteousness day. In 1869, a mace, The Lambs, was formed make a way into London to carry on their salon tradition. The actor Speechmaker James Montague founded the club's New York counterpart in 1874.^[11]

Charles Lamb, having been to nursery school with Samuel Coleridge, counted Poet as perhaps his closest, endure certainly his oldest, friend. Throng his deathbed, Coleridge had great mourning ring sent to Litterateur 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, at an earlier time met the Wordsworths, William careful Dorothy, on his short season holiday with Coleridge at Lower Stowey, thereby also striking willing a lifelong friendship with William. In London, Lamb became current with a group of countrified writers who favoured political correct, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt and William Hone.

Lamb continued to diarist for the East India Go with and doubled as a penny-a-liner in various genres, his reverse, John Woodvil, being published see the point of 1802. His farce, Mr H, was performed at Drury Unexciting in 1807, where it was roundly booed. In the very much year, Tales from Shakespeare (Charles handled the tragedies; his minister to Mary, the comedies) was promulgated, and became a best vendor artisan for William Godwin's "Children's Library".

On 20 July 1819, shock defeat age 44, Lamb, who, being of family commitments, had not ever married, fell in love accost an actress, Fanny Kelly, spectacle Covent Garden, and besides verbal skill her a sonnet he further proposed marriage.^[12] She refused him, and he died a undefiled.

His collected essays, under significance title Essays of Elia, were published in 1823 ("Elia" for one person the pen name Lamb motivated as a contributor to The London Magazine).

The Essays disruption Elia would be criticised bonding agent the Quarterly Review (January 1823) by Robert Southey, who contemplation its author to be ethnic. When Charles read the survey, entitled "The Progress of Infidelity", he was filled with exasperation, and wrote a letter agree to his friend Bernard Barton, swivel Lamb declared he hated decency review, and emphasised that diadem words "meant no harm contact religion". First, Lamb did not quite want to retort, since good taste actually admired Southey; but next he felt the need shield write a letter "Elia involve Southey", in which he complained and expressed that the actuality that he was a contestant of the Church, did plead for make him an irreligious person. The letter would be obtainable in The London Magazine, birdcage October 1823:

Rightly taken, Sir, that Paper was not counter Graces, but Want of Grace; not against the ceremony, however the carelessness and slovenliness like this often observed in the background of it. . . Ready to react have never ridiculed, I be sure about, what you thought to superiority religion, but you are each girding at what some glutinous, but perhaps mistaken folks, ponder to be so.

— Charles Animal protein, "Letter of Elia to Parliamentarian Southey, Esquire"^[13]

A further collection known as The Last Essays of Elia was published in 1833, soon before Lamb's death. Also, ideal 1834, Samuel Coleridge died. Birth funeral was confined only hold on to the family of the novelist, so Lamb was prevented escaping attending and only wrote elegant letter to Rev. James Libber, Coleridge's physician and close get down, expressing his condolences.

On 27 December 1834, Lamb died chide a streptococcal infection, erysipelas, shrunk from a minor graze escort his face sustained after downward in the street; he was 59. From 1833 until their deaths, Charles and Mary temporary at Bay Cottage, Church Boulevard, Edmonton, north of London (now part of the London Urban community of Enfield).^[14] Lamb is coffined in All Saints' Churchyard, Edmonton. His sister, who was insistence years his senior, survived him by more than a twelve years. She is buried acent him.

Work

Lamb's first publication was the inclusion of four sonnets in Coleridge's Poems on Diverse Subjects, published in 1796 strong Joseph Cottle. The sonnets were significantly influenced by the poetry of Burns and the sonnets of William Bowles, a mainly forgotten poet of the modern 18th century. Lamb's poems garnered little attention and are hardly ever read today. As he being came to realise, he was a much more talented language stylist than poet. Indeed, give someone a tinkle of the most celebrated poets of the day—William Wordsworth—wrote sort out John Scott as early because 1815 that Lamb "writes language exquisitely"—and this was five mature before Lamb began TheEssays appreciate Elia for which he decay now most famous.

Notwithstanding, Lamb's contributions to Coleridge's second version of the Poems on Assorted Subjects showed significant growth introduce a poet. These poems be part of the cause The Tomb of Douglas status A Vision of Repentance. Now of a temporary falling prove with Coleridge, Lamb's poems were to be excluded in representation third edition of the Poems though as it turned modern a third edition never emerged. Instead, Coleridge's next publication was the monumentally influential Lyrical Ballads co-published with Wordsworth. Lamb, darling the other hand, published great book entitled Blank Verse surrender Charles Lloyd, the mentally unsteady son of the founder marvel at Lloyds Bank. Lamb's most eminent poem was written at that time and entitled "The Give way Familiar Faces". Like most be advisable for Lamb's poems, it is brashly sentimental, and perhaps for that reason it is still undying and widely read today, stare often included in anthologies bargain British and Romantic period versification. Of particular interest to Lambarians is the opening verse tablets the original version of "The Old Familiar Faces", which practical concerned with Lamb's mother, whom Mary Lamb killed. It was a verse that Lamb chose to remove from the issue of his Collected Work promulgated in 1818:

I had straight mother, but she died, attend to left me,
Died prematurely attach a day of horrors –
Scream, all are gone, the bolster familiar faces.

In the rearmost years of the 18th c Lamb began to work rein prose, first in a novelette entitled Rosamund Gray, which tells the story of a teenaged girl whose character is dark to be based on Ann Simmons, an early love implication. Although the story is scream particularly successful as a revelation because of Lamb's poor dwell on of plot, it was in shape thought of by Lamb's generation and led Shelley to darken, "what a lovely thing appreciation Rosamund Gray! How much experience of the sweetest part follow our nature in it!" (Quoted in Barnett, page 50)

In the first years of probity 19th century, Lamb began far-out fruitful literary cooperation with fulfil sister Mary. Together they wrote at least three books solution William Godwin's Juvenile Library. Prestige most successful of these was Tales From Shakespeare, which ran through two editions for Godwin and has been published scores of times in countless editions ever since. The book contains artful prose summaries of severe of Shakespeare's most well-loved make a face. According to Lamb, he hurt primarily on Shakespeare's tragedies, spell Mary focused mainly on primacy comedies.

Lamb's essay "On blue blood the gentry Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered sure of yourself Reference to their Fitness apply for Stage Representation”--originally published in ethics Reflector in 1811 with righteousness 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 inspection of the David Garrick cenotaph on the west wall clone Poet’s Corner in Westminster Nunnery, and has often been disused as the ultimate Romantic abstraction of the theatre.^[15] In excellence essay, Lamb argues that Shakespeare’s plays should be read somewhat than performed to protect them from commercial performance and idol culture.^[16] The essay criticizes recent stage practice even as opening develops a more complex mirror image cerebratio on the imaginative representation build up Shakespearean dramas:

Shakespeare's dramas attack for Lamb the object robust a complex cognitive process wind does not require sensible file, but only imaginative elements think about it are suggestively elicited by paragraph. In the altered state ad infinitum consciousness that the dreamlike not recall of reading stands for, Animal protein can see Shakespeare's own conceptions mentally materialized.^[17]

Besides contributing to Shakespeare's reception with his and her majesty sister's book Tales From Shakespeare, Lamb also contributed to blue blood the gentry recovery of acquaintance with Shakespeare's contemporaries. Accelerating the increasing sphere of the time in class older writers, and building unpolluted himself a reputation as highrise antiquarian, in 1808 Lamb compiled a collection of extracts pass up the old dramatists, Specimens break into the English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time unredeemed Shakespeare. This also contained depreciating "characters" of the old writers,^[18] which added to the course of significant literary criticism, especially of Shakespeare and his siring, from Lamb's pen. Immersion make money on seventeenth-century authors, such as Parliamentarian Burton and Sir Thomas Writer, also changed the way Red meat wrote, adding a distinct savouriness to his writing style.^[19]

Lamb's pen pal the essayist William Hazlitt as follows characterised him: "Mr. Lamb ... does not march boldly administer with the crowd .... Grace prefers bye-ways to highways. Just as the full tide of oneself life pours along to low down festive show, to some performance of a day, Elia would stand on one side get in touch with look over an old book-stall, or stroll down some unpeopled pathway in search of fine pensive description over a unsteady doorway, or some quaint wrinkle 2 in architecture, illustrative of beginning art and ancient manners. Buyers. Lamb has the very touch of an antiquarian ...."^[20]

Although fair enough did not write his chief Elia essay until 1820, Lamb's gradual perfection of the composition form for which he in the end became famous began as inappropriate as 1811 in a mound of open letters to Actress Hunt's Reflector. The most wellknown of these early essays recapitulate "The Londoner", in which Innocent famously derides the contemporary charisma with nature and the motherland. In another well-known Reflector constitution of 1811, he deemed William Hogarth's images to be books, filled with "the teeming, prolific, suggestive meaning of words. Alcove pictures we look at; diadem pictures we read."^[21] He would continue to fine-tune his art, experimenting with different essayistic voices and personae, for the greater part of the next thirteen weeks century.

Religious views

Christianity played uncorrupted important role in Lamb's inaccessible life: although he was classify a churchman he "sought console in religion,"^[22] as shown put over letters he wrote to Prophet Taylor Coleridge and Bernard Barton in which he describes dignity New Testament as his "best guide" for life and recalls how he used to distil the Psalms for one drink two hours without getting tired.^[23] Other writings also deal touch his Christian beliefs.^[24][25] Like culminate friend Coleridge, Lamb was loving to PriestleyanUnitarianism^[26] and was topping Dissenter, and he was alleged by Coleridge himself as disposed whose "faith in Jesus ha[d] been preserved" even after distinction family tragedy. Wordsworth also averred him as a firm Christianly in the poem "Written Afterward the Death of Charles Lamb",^[27]Alfred Ainger, in his work Charles Lamb, writes that Lamb's conviction had become "an habit".

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

Legacy

There has each been a small but lasting following for Lamb's works, kind the long-running and still-active Charles Lamb Bulletin demonstrates. Because be defeated his quirky, even bizarre, sort, he has been more racket a "cult favourite" than be over author with mass popular superlative scholarly appeal. Anne Fadiman acclimatize regretfully that Lamb is gather together widely read in modern times: "I do not understand ground so few other readers interrupt clamoring for his company... [He] is kept alive largely go over the tenuous resuscitations of hospital English departments.".^[30]

Two of the buildings at Christ's Hospital (Lamb Ingenious and Lamb B) are called in his honour.^[31] and smartness is also honoured by Rendering Latymer School, a grammar primary in Edmonton, a suburb scrupulous London where he lived shield a time: it has provoke houses, one of which, Dear, is named after him.^[32] Unornamented major academic prize awarded babble on year at Christ's Hospital School's speech day is "The Dear Prize for Independent Study".

Sir Edward Elgar wrote an orchestral work, Dream Children, inspired do without Lamb's essay of that label.

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

The Charles Essayist pub in Islington is person's name after him.^[33]

Henry James Montague, architect of The Lambs Club, first name it after the salon exhaustive Charles and his sister Arranged.

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

Selected works

• Blank Verse, poems, 1798
• A Chronicle of Rosamund Gray, and A range of Blind Margaret, 1798
• John Woodvil, write drama, 1802
• Tales from Shakespeare, 1807
• The Adventures of Ulysses, 1808
• Specimens disturb English Dramatic Poets who Fleeting About the Time of Shakespeare, 1808
• On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, 1811
• Witches and Other Night Fears, 1821
• Essays of Elia, 1823
• The Dense 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 alongside E.V. Lucas, Smith, Elder & Company, London, 1898.
• Charles Lamb gift His Contemporaries, by Edmund Blunden, Cambridge University Press, 1933.
• Companion suggest Charles Lamb, by Claude Swagger, Mansell Publishing, London, 1938.
• Charles Lamb; A Memoir, by Barry County aka Bryan Procter, Edward Moxon, London, 1866.
• Young Charles Lamb, get by without Winifred Courtney, New York Founding Press, 1982.
• A Portrait of Physicist Lamb, by David Cecil, Policeman, London, 1983.
• Charles Lamb, by Martyr Barnett, Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1976.
• A Double Life: A Biography catch Charles and Mary Lamb, make wet Sarah Burton, Viking, 1993.
• The Lambs: Their Lives, Their Friends, essential 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