LAMB, CHARLES (1775-1834). An English essayist and critic. He was born in Lon don, February 10, 1775, and received his edu cation at Christ's Hospital School. An impedi ment in his speech debarred him from a univer sity appointment, and he left school in 1789 to take a small clerkship under his elder brother, in the South Sea house. In 1792 a friend pro cured him an appointment in the accountant's office of the East India house, a post which he held for thirty-three years. Insanity. inherited from the mother, cast a gloom over the family showing itself once in Charles, who in his twenty-first year was confined in an asylum for a few weeks, and frequently in his sister \lary Ann (born 1764), who in 1796 was suddenly seized with acute mania and stabbed her mother to the heart. This tragedy prevented Charles from marrying Ann Simmons, the 'gentle maid' who is alluded to in several sonnets, and under the name of Bartram in Dream Children. The rest of his life was devoted to his unfortunate sister, whom he refused to place permanently in eon finenient. In her periods of health she was of great assistance to him in his literary work. Lamb's first. published efforts were four sonnets contributed in 1706 to the volume Poems on Various Subjects by Coleridge. his old schoolfel low and devoted friend. In 1797 Coleridge pub lished a second edition of his Poems, to which Lamb and his friend Charles Lloyd contributed; and in 1798 Lamb and Lloyd issued Blank Verse. in which first appeared the exquisite lines entitled "Old 'Familiar Faces." Lamb did not acquire fame by these poems, nor by the tale Rosamund Gray (1798). the drama John Wood ri/ (1S02), or the farce Mr. H. (performed December 10. 1805). In I807 he received a com mission from William Godwin to contribute to Jiis "Juvenile Library." For this series, he and his sister wrote their Talcs from Shakespeare (1807), Mary doing the comedies, and Charles the tragedies. This was his first real success, and led the next year to the Ailrentures of ('hisses, which Charles wrote single-handed out of Chapman's Homer. In 180S he published Specimens of English Dramatic Ports Contem porary with Shakespeare, which was a revelation to his generation, almost totally ignorant of these great writers, and which established his reputa tion as a critic of rare taste. In 1820 he was
invited to join the staff of the London Magazine, and contributed. as the first of a series of light prose essays. a description of the old South Sea house, signing himself `Elia? the name of an old fellow-clerk. This and the papers following it, the finest of their kind in the English lan guage, appeared in collected form as Essays of Elia (1S23), and Last Essays of Elia (1833). In 1825 Lamb was retired from his clerkship, on account of failing health, and he received a pen sion of £111 a year, upon which and his sister removed first to Enfield and finally to Edmonton; but Mary's increasing insanity, separation from literary friends, and the death of Coleridge in 1834, combined to surround the last years of the genial author's life with melancholy. He yet continued to write considerably. To this time belong Popular Fallacies (1826) and the beautiful lines on the death of Hood's first child entitled On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born (1828). Lamb died at Edmonton. December 27, 1834, and was buried in the churchyard there. Mary Lamb outlived him nearly thirteen years, dying in flay, 1847. Lamb belongs to a group of essayists and critics of which the other chief members arc llazlitt and Leigh Hunt. Though he was not so productive as either of his eon temporaries, his work is of a finer quality. Time has taken nothing from the charm of the Essays of Elia; and in appreciative criticism Lamb is still one of the masters. One of the de lights of all his work is the revelation of him self, his pathos, and his humor. His essays and letters are his autobiography. In 1837 T. N. Talfourd published Lettcrs of C. Lamb, with a Sketch of His Life, to which he added, in 1848, Final Memorials. Both books with additions were reedited by Hazlitt (1886). Consult, also, the Memoir by Ainger in "English Alen of Letters Series" (London. 1S82) ; and Com pl•te Works and Correspondence, edited by Rin ger (6 vols., London, 1SS3-SS).