mary and charles lamb tales from shakespeare

Combined with the delights of his prose, more than his poetry, and the glamour of this gifted circle, Lamb slowly acquired what one critic has called “the status of cultural teddy bear in the Victorian establishment”. Lamb also became friends with Hazlitt and Wordsworth, whose fame rubbed off on him.

In 1796, he had four sonnets in Coleridge’s volume, Poems on Various Subjects, and still more verse in the second edition, published the following year.

Lamb had already launched a precocious career when, in 1794, he and close friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge published a number of poems in the Morning Post. It seems that he accepted his fraternal duty without complaint, and channelled his own and his sister’s imaginative energies into literature, in particular the highly popular Tales from Shakespeare, a bestselling book throughout the 19th century. Besides, from all accounts, Charles Lamb was exceptionally kind, extraordinarily free from affectation and blessed with an innate good humour. However, there remained enough good reason in her for brother and sister to collaborate on literary projects, possibly as a sort of therapy. Mary’s madness would recur briefly almost every year until her death in 1847. Young Charles Lamb had to persuade the parish to let him take responsibility for his sister for the rest of her days.

Mary and charles lamb tales from shakespeare