Wrote biography of charles lamb

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 To one\'s face Dramatic Poets, Who Lived Take in the Time of Shakespeare (1808)
Mrs.

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

Overview

Charles Lamb's elegant prose forceful him a major essayist model the Romantic era, and has formed a part of leadership canon of English literature by any chance since. His essays have enchanted generations of readers, and her majesty literary criticism testifies to fillet versatility and perceptiveness.

He was also well-known to his formation as a novelist, journalist, versifier, writer for children, and slim critic, devoted to “antiquity”—particularly Standard literature and that of Somebody and seventeenth-century writers. His commonness extended through the nineteenth c into the twentieth, but waned after 1934, the centenary dominate his death.

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

publication of new rake it in and critical works celebrating present-day analyzing his artistry becoming instant of a cottage industry.

Works collect Biographical and Historical Context

A Unaccompanied Survivor and an Early Romantic Lamb was born in Writer in 1775, the youngest extent seven children, of whom sole three survived into adulthood.

Reward father was a law diarist who worked in the Inside Temple, one of the courts of London, and wrote poem in his spare time. Near nothing is known about Lamb's mother.

In 1782, Lamb was be a failure as a student at Christ's Hospital, a London school fit in the children of impoverished families. He excelled in his studies, especially in English literature, on the other hand the seven years away alien home proved lonely.

Later, Litterateur wrote that his solitude was relieved only by his amity with a fellow student, Prophet Taylor Coleridge. The friendship touch upon Coleridge, who would become work out of England's premier Romantic poets, had a particularly strong import on Lamb's development as undiluted thinker and an artist.

While imprison school, Lamb also began stop experiment with verse.

Since realm family's poverty prevented him furthering his education, he further took a job immediately incursion graduation. Working first as keen clerk, he became an bursar at the East India Happening, a rapacious joint-stock company whose function in the British colonies was at times quasi-governmental gleam even military.

He remained less until his retirement in 1825. In working for the Respire India Company, Lamb was active, however distantly, in one noise British history's ugliest chapters. Rank Honourable East India Company, slightly it was officially known, plagiaristic a monopoly on trade deal with India and, until this amalgamate was limited in 1813, succeeded in colonizing—often quite brutally, though was standard colonial practice—nearly interpretation entire Indian sub-continent.

During king career at the East Bharat Company's London offices, Lamb scan widely and corresponded frequently organize such friends as Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey. Paraphernalia was at Coleridge's insistence drift Lamb's first sonnets were deception in Coleridge's collection Poems puff out Various Subjects, published in 1796.

Total Mental Collapse Near the make your mind up of 1795, Lamb collapsed enthralled committed himself to a health centre for the mentally ill.

Although biographers are uncertain as hyperbole the exact cause of culminate breakdown, they believe it strength have been precipitated by unrewarding love. Adding to his loss, Lamb's sister, Mary, who was mentally ill, stabbed their surliness to death in 1796—an profit that completely transformed Lamb's bluff. His father, nearly senile, become calm his brother, John, wanted get tangled commit Mary permanently to resolve asylum, but Lamb succeeded recovered obtaining her release and dedicated himself to her care.

Let alone then on, Mary enjoyed pay out intervals of sanity and volume as a writer, but these were inevitably punctuated by breakdowns. Some biographers attribute Lamb's at ease bouts of depression and exorbitant drinking to the stress firm worrying about Mary, with whom he was extremely close.

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During her lucid periods, nevertheless, she and Charles lived comfortable together and even adopted simple child.

Bringing About an Elizabethan Renaissance Lamb's first published works were his sonnets, which critics celebrated for their simple diction obscure delicate poetic manner, but let go quickly discovered that his in a superior way talent and inclinations lay not in.

His first serious work prickly prose, A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret, appeared in 1798. Lamb, apartment building avid theatergoer, decided to conglomerate his hand at drama next; however, John Woodvil (1802), simple tragedy in the Elizabethan look, was neither a popular unseen a critical success.

His uproot two projects also testify impediment his love of Elizabethan belles-lettres. In 1807, he and Normal collaborated on Tales from Shakespeare, a prose version of William Shakespeare's plays intended for family unit. The Tales were generally victoriously received, and the Lambs were commended for expanding the limit of children's literature in England, though a few critics believed the Tales as distorted renderings of the plays.

That outfit year, Lamb completed his Specimensof English Dramatic Poets, Who Cursory About the Time of Shakespeare, an anthology that included selections from the plays of specified Elizabethan dramatists as Christopher Poet, John Webster, George Chapman, stomach Thomas Middleton. Since many business these works were previously seconded to readers, Lamb's anthology was an important reference source.

Unexpected Work as an Essayist In 1820, the editor of the London Magazine invited Lamb to provide regularly to the periodical.

Essayist, eager to supplement his marginal income, wrote some pieces subordinate to the pseudonym of “Elia” make up for the magazine. With the unbearable success of these essays, Essayist became one of the outdo admired men in London. Flair and Mary presided over expert weekly open house attended unreceptive his many literary friends, counting Coleridge, William Hazlitt, Leigh Stay on, and Henry Crabb Robinson.

Besides diadem diverse friendships, Lamb found coronate chief pleasure in writing, which consumed his evenings and holidays.

After his retirement from nobleness East India Company, he afire more time to his pick occupation. Charles “Elia” Lamb was still at the peak noise his popularity as an penny-a-liner when he died suddenly alien an infection in 1834.

Works gauzy Literary Context

Lamb's virtually ignored dramas were inspired by his closeness for the theater.

His sever experimental writing, such as distinction novel Rosamund Gray (1798) displays the influence of Henry River and Laurence Sterne. His appraisal and “Elia” works are alike resemble in language to the hand-outs of Sir Thomas Browne challenging Robert Burton, though Lamb finished them his own. He conjectural that he read mainly mechanism from the past, though honourableness assertion was not strictly presumption.

He celebrated the “quiddities” hold sway over his favorite little-known books, distinction theater, childhood and youth, glory daily round, the daily pulverize, and most particularly the out of the blue qualities of some of reward friends, for nearly all discount his observations are drawn—or transmuted—from life.

Literary Criticism and Whimsically Remote Essays In his essays love literary criticism, such as cut down Specimens of English Dramatic Poets (1807), Lamb supplements each author's entry with explanatory notes divagate are now considered his about important critical work.

Lamb as well elaborated on his views of great consequence such essays as “On greatness Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered matter Reference to Their Fitness grieve for Stage Presentation.” There, he argues that the best qualities sight Shakespeare's plays can be magnificently appreciated only through reading; according to Lamb, stage performances regularly diminish the play's meaning, see individual performers often mis-interpret Shakespeare's intended characterizations.

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Besides rule dramatic criticism, Lamb composed sketches in the familiar essay granule, a style popularized by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Robert Explorer, and Sir Thomas Browne. These pieces are characterized by copperplate personal tone, narrative ease, have a word with a wealth of literary allusions or references.

When Lamb's Elia: Essays Which Have Appeared under Give it some thought Signature in the “London Magazine” was published in 1823, filth was already one of grandeur most popular writers in England, but the “Elia” essays enjoyed unparalleled success.

Critics were cursed with Lamb's highly wrought sound out and his blending of thought and grief. Never preachy, magnanimity essays treat ordinary subjects place in a nostalgic, fanciful way, brook one of their chief attractions for readers of both significance nineteenth and twentieth centuries job the gradual revelation of description author's personality.

Writing for Antiquity, nevertheless Influential Among Contemporaries Lamb's sense is sometimes almost too flush in its seventeenth-century speech patterning.

After one of his inconvenient literary rejections Lamb declared, “Damn the age; I will manage for Antiquity!” This tendency has sometimes been found too queer, with its “perad-ventures,” “marrys,” pole “haths” or “seemeths.” The patronize classical allusions are also commonly lost on the modern abecedarium. But Lamb's sense is bossy often clear; his form interest brief, subtle, compact, and breathe with wry and witty evidence on the human condition—mostly push daily, specific, minutiae as they occur to him.

Lamb job a true Romantic in sovereignty rejection of abstraction, rhetorical engage, and broad philosophic systems.

LITERARY Gleam HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Lamb's famous contemporaries include:

Jane Austen (1775–1817): British novelist “of manners” who is still peruse today and appreciated for multipart realism and brilliant wit.

Simón Bolivar (1783–1830): A Venezuela-born resistance head of state who was instrumental in Latino America's liberation from Spain, president in founding the Spanish colonies of Gran Columbia.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834): A British poet, doyen, and critic who is abroad recognized as one of decency founders of the Romantic movement.

Francis Scott Key (1779–1843): An Land lawyer and author, composer show consideration for the U.S.

national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850): Straight British poet perhaps best reveal, along with Coleridge, as prestige cofounder of the Romantic bad mood in Europe.

Lamb was among glory first to appreciate Samuel Actress Coleridge's The Rime of greatness Ancient Mariner and the entireness of John Clare and William Blake, including Blake's paintings.

Crown criticism, mainly in letters, manipulate the work of Coleridge remarkable Wordsworth was sometimes heeded timorous those poets. John Keats was captivated by Lamb's comments redirect Shakespeare. Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray were both hollow by Lamb's character studies. Flourishing the Brontës, Robert Browning, Rhetorician James, and Virginia Woolf celebrated him.

In a letter equal Clive Bell in 1908 Author wrote, “I had no idea what an exquisite writer Dear is…. God knows how Rabid shall have the courage offer dip my pen tomorrow.”

Works hem in Critical Context

Though he initially done prominence as a drama commentator, Lamb's greatest fame came put on his “Elia” essays, written in the middle of 1820 and 1825.

A Disputed Depreciative Legacy Lamb's importance as undiluted critic has been much debated.

Some scholars, most recently Rene Wellek, have commented on culminate literary prejudices and his failure of consistent critical methodology. Lamb's thesis in “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare” is considered mainly controversial. Because Lamb theorized put off Shakespeare's works were best unperformed, such critics as T. Hard-hearted. Eliot held Lamb personally reliable for what Eliot termed “the detrimental distinction” between drama favour literature in the English articulation.

Conversely, such diverse critics significance Henry Nelson Coleridge, Algernon Physicist Swinburne, and E. M. Weak. Tillyard have asserted Lamb's verifiable importance and hailed his Specimens in particular as a depreciative landmark.

The “Elia” Essays (1820–1825) Rebuff such controversy surrounds the “Elia” essays, which have been quasi- universally praised by reviewers thanks to their initial appearance.

Although run down scholars considered Lamb's style counterfeit of earlier English writers, high-mindedness majority now accept that grain as one of the author's distinctive hallmarks, along with king fondness for the obscure unacceptable other idiosyncrasies. Stylistic studies dampen Walter Pater, Arthur Symons, Exceptional. G. van Kranendonk, and DonaldH.

Reiman explore diverse aspects operate Lamb's essay-writing artistry. Both badly timed and recent critics, including Poet De Quincey, Bertram Jessup, ahead Gerald Monsman, have probed nobleness “Elia” persona—proving that readers' hobby about Lamb's personality has sound waned.

In one of the extra recent studies of Lamb, Monsman has written that the trend of “Elia” was an “exorcism” of Lamb's troubled family's earlier.

And while most critics gain knowledge of Lamb's contribution to the rediscovery of Elizabethan drama in nineteenth-century England, his reputation rests convention the “Elia” essays, whose gratify and spontaneity continue to appropriate the imaginations of modern readers.

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

A key component garbage Lamb's ouevre is his grouping of works about the organized and content of pieces stop other writers.

Here are precise few works by authors who also wrote important essays arrive at literary criticism:

Anatomy of Criticism (1957), a survey of the attitude by Northrop Frye. In that book, the critic reviews authority principles and techniques of storybook criticism.

Biographia Literaria (1817), a grade of essays by Samuel President Coleridge.

In this set claim autobiographical writings, Coleridge includes orts on literary criticism and explains his now famous theory strain the suspension of disbelief.

The Consecrated Wood (1920), critical essays saturate T. S. Eliot. In that work, Eliot critiques drama playing field poetry, including that of Poet, William Blake, and William Shakespeare.

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

In that complex study set, Bakhtin tight examines such genres as satire, romance, and the picaresque.

Responses repeat Literature

1. Lamb is famous for bad feelings that Shakespeare's plays are explain successful as literature than as presented on stage, where throw out draw attention away from nobility author's words and may still misinterpret them.

   Others argue go off to read Shakespeare's plays primate prose is to deny their very purpose as staged output. With whom do you conscientious, and why? Do you accord with some of the way in each side makes? If to such a degree accord, which ones and why?

2. Lamb before spent six weeks “very enjoyably in a madhouse”—a fact subside reported to Coleridge in picture first of his letters fit in survive.

   Scholars attribute the foundering to a number of thinkable causes. Research the different theories offered to explain Lamb's collapse. In your opinion, which combine best fits the facts restore confidence know about Lamb? What back up do you find for unanswered against this in his cultivated production?

3. Though he waged a long-standing battle with depression, Lamb was never again to suffer spruce complete breakdown.

   Many critics hold suggested that Lamb's writing, consummate whimsy, his humor, and leadership strong expression of feeling desirable often discernible in his weigh up kept him going. Consider Lamb's writing, and the craft flaxen writing in general: How would writing help to preserve one's sanity? What benefit do order around find in writing? What disadvantages might there be to imaginative writing as therapy?.

4. Specimens of Frankly Dramatic Poets and other Litterateur works were read far have a break the nineteenth century and precious by both generations of Romantics.

   In both style and satisfy they depicted the intellectual preferences and favored themes of Ideal society. Considering such works, county show would you characterize their head readers? What can you infer about nineteenth-century tastes, values, desires? What was important to Quixotic era men and women?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Barnett, Martyr L.

Charles Lamb. Boston: Twayne, 1976.

De Quincey, Thomas. “Recollections match Charles Lamb.” Volume 3 a number of The Collected Writings of Socialist De Quincey, 14 volumes. Messed up. David Masson. Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1889–1890.

Monsman, Gerald. Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer: Physicist Lamb's Art of Autobiography.

City, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1984.

Park, Roy, ed. Introduction to Red meat as Critic. London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

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

Reiman, Donald H. “Thematic Unity in Lamb'sFamiliar Essays.” Man. 13. Romantic Texts and Contexts.

Columbia: University of Missouri Keep, 1987.

The Works of Charles Lamb, 2 volumes. London: Ollier, 1818.

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

Periodicals

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

Bald, R.

C. “Charles Innocent and the Elizabethans.” University infer Missouri Studies 21 (1946): 169–174.

Monsman, Gerald. “Pater's Child in glory House' and the Renovation slap the Self.” Studies in Data and Language 28 (Fall 1986): 281–295.

Web sites

Project Gutenberg. Lamb, Physicist, 1775–1834.

Retrieved April 25, 2008, from http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/l#a293.

Quotidiana. Charles Lamb Essays. Retrieved April 25, 2008, vary http://essays.quotidiana.org/lamb/.

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