Fortuitously, Lamb's first publication was in 1796, when four sonnets by 'Mr. On his deathbed, Coleridge had a mourning ring sent to Lamb and his sister. Charles Lamb, having been to school with Samuel Coleridge, counted Coleridge as perhaps his closest, and certainly his oldest, friend.

Their London quarters became a kind of weekly salon for many of the most outstanding theatrical and literary figures of the day.

Mary came to live again with him in Pentonville, and in 1800 they set up a shared home at Mitre Court Buildings in the Temple, where they lived until 1809.ĭespite Lamb's bouts of melancholia, both he and his sister enjoyed an active and rich social life. In 1799, John Lamb died, leaving Charles, aged 24, to carry on as best he could. With the help of friends Lamb succeeded in obtaining his sister's release from what would otherwise have been lifelong imprisonment, on the condition that he take personal responsibility for her safekeeping. On September 22, 1796, a terrible event occurred: Mary, 'worn down to a state of extreme nervous misery by attention to needlework by day and to her mother at night,' was seized with acute mania and stabbed her mother to the heart with a table knife. He was, however, already making his name as a poet. On Aphe went to work in the Accountant's Office for British East India Company, the death of his father's employer having ruined the family's fortunes.Ĭharles and his sister Mary both suffered periods of mental illness, and Charles spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital during 1795. Its subsequent downfall in a pyramid scheme after Lamb left would be contrasted to the company's prosperity in the first Elia essay. For a short time he worked in the office of Joseph Paice, a London merchant, and then for twenty-three weeks, until 8 February 1792, he held a small post in the Examiner's Office of the South Sea House. After leaving school in 1789 at age 14, 'an inconquerable impediment' in his speech disqualified him for a clerical career. There he formed a close friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge which would last for many years. He was born in Crown Office Row, Inner Temple, London, and spent his youth there, later going away to school at Christ's Hospital. Lamb was the youngest child of John Lamb, a lawyer's clerk. Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist with Welsh heritage, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, which he produced along with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764–1847).

Mr lamb's tales from shakespeare