Mary Lamb

Mary Lamb
With her brother Charles - painting by Francis Stephen Cary
Born	3 December 1764(1764-12-03) England.
Died	20 May 1847(1847-05-20) (aged 82) England.
Known for	Tales from Shakespeare
Relatives	Charles Lamb (brother)

Mary Ann Lamb (3 December 1764 – 20 May 1847), was an English writer, the sister and collaborator of Charles Lamb.

Biography

She was born on 3 December 1764. In 1796, Mary, who had suffered a breakdown from the strain of caring for her family, killed her mother with a kitchen knife, and from then on had to be kept under constant supervision. When their senile father died, her younger brother became her official guardian. They lived together and in 1823 they met and adopted an orphan, Emma Isola, who later married Charles's publisher Edward Moxon.^[1]

In 1807, Mary collaborated with Charles on a children's book, Tales from Shakespeare, and they produced other popular works for children in later years. On her own, Mary Lamb published an epistolary work, Mrs Leicester's School, which the poet Samuel Coleridge believed would and should be "acknowledged as a rich jewel in the treasury of our permanent English literature." It is with this book, concerning the tales of a variety of motherless and orphaned girls, that Mary Lamb seemed to deal with the personal themes of grief and guilt. Though her solo turn, critically acclaimed at the time, has not outlived its era, Tales from Shakespeare continues to be in print. It was first published by William Godwin (Mary Wollstonecraft's widower) and his second wife Mary Jane Godwin (mother of Claire Clairmont).

Mary continued to suffer bouts of mental illness throughout her life. Notwithstanding these dramatic interruptions, Mary, along with her brother, was at the center of an ongoing artist's salon in London, entertaining many theatrical and literary luminaries of the day. Among other notables, Coleridge praised her for the sensibility and empathy that characterized extended periods in which she was free of the symptoms of the bipolar disorder that she battled, often valiantly. Although contemporaries had predicted that Mary would be the first to die, it was Charles who succumbed to complications of an infected wound in 1834. Biographers have noted the irony of her brother's relatively greater dependence on her and her seeming instinct for survival, but after his death, she grew increasingly frail, cared for at times by a family and at others in an asylum.

She died on 20 May 1847, and was buried next to her brother in the Edmonton Churchyard in Middlesex.^[2]

Legacy

Subsequently, Mary has been depicted as the central character in The Lambs of London (2004), a novel by Peter Ackroyd. She is also the subject of a recent biographical study by British writer Kathy Watson, The Devil Kissed Her. Ms. Watson credits Mary Lamb with the "better half" of the writing in Tales in terms of its vibrancy and skill.

References

1. ^ Edward Moxon at ODNB
2. ^ Francis, J. C. Notes by the way (1909) [Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/72 p.2]. Retrieved 3 January 2009.

External links

Biography portal

• Works by Mary Lamb at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Mary Lamb at Internet Archive
• Archival material relating to Mary Lamb listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• Tales from a Muddy Island blog Extensive posting on Mrs Leicester's School and general biographical information on Mary Lamb
• Mrs Leicester's School Additional Internet Archive link to the 1899 illustrated edition
• Mary Lamb at Find a Grave

Persondata
Name	Lamb, Mary
Alternative names
Short description	England writer, the sister and collaborator of Charles Lamb (writer)
Date of birth	3 December 1764
Place of birth	England.
Date of death	20 May 1847
Place of death	England.