Web19/07/ · His essays have the charm of poetry. Epigrammatic depth, ease, emotional flexibility allusiveness all mark the essays of Elia. Lamb’s style is natural and original. He WebEssays of Elia is a collection of essays written by Charles Lamb; it was first published in book form in , with a second volume, Last Essays of Elia, issued in by the WebCheck out our charles lamb essays selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops
Charles Lamb - Wikipedia
Charles Lamb 10 February — 27 December was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarianbest known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeareco-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb — Friends with such literary luminaries as Samuel Taylor ColeridgeRobert SoutheyWilliam Wordsworthand William HazlittLamb was at the centre of a major literary circle in England. He charles lamb essays been referred to by E. Lucashis principal biographer, as "the most lovable figure in English literature". Lamb was born in London, the son of John Lamb c. John Lamb was a lawyer's clerk [3] and spent most of his professional life as the assistant to a barrister named Charles lamb essays Saltwho lived in the Inner Temple in the legal district of London; it was there, in Crown Office Rowthat Charles Charles lamb essays was born and spent his youth.
Lamb created a portrait of his father in his "Elia on the Old Benchers" under the name Lovel. Lamb's older brother was too much his senior to be a youthful companion to the boy but his sister Mary, being born eleven years before him, was probably his closest playmate. A number of writings by both Charles and Mary suggest that the conflict between Aunt Hetty and her sister-in-law created a certain degree of tension in the Lamb household. However, Charles speaks fondly of her and her presence in the house seems to have brought a great deal of comfort to him. Some of Lamb's fondest childhood memories were of time spent with Mrs Field, his maternal grandmother, charles lamb essays, who was charles lamb essays many years a servant to the Plumer family, who owned a large country house called Blakesware, near WidfordHertfordshire.
After the death of Mrs Plumer, Lamb's grandmother was in sole charge of the large home and, as William Plumer was often absent, charles lamb essays, Charles had free rein of the place during his visits. A picture of these visits can be glimpsed in the Elia essay Blakesmoor in H—shire. Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic in it. The tapestried charles lamb essays — tapestry so much better than painting — not adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots — at which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid replaced as quickly to exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally — charles lamb essays Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions.
Little is known about Charles's life before he was seven other than that Mary taught him to read at a very early age and he read voraciously. It is believed that he had smallpox during his early years, which forced him into a long period of convalescence. After this period of recovery Lamb began to take lessons from Mrs Reynolds, a woman who lived in the Temple and is believed to have been the former wife of a lawyer. Mrs Reynolds must have been a sympathetic schoolmistress because Lamb maintained a charles lamb essays with her throughout his life and she is known to have attended dinner parties held by Mary and Charles in the s. Lucas charles lamb essays that sometime in Charles left Mrs Reynolds and began to study at the Academy of William Bird.
His time with William Bird did not last long, however, because by October Lamb was enrolled in Christ's Hospitala charity charles lamb essays school chartered by King Edward VI in A thorough record of Christ's Hospital is to be found in several essays by Lamb as well as The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt and the Biographia Literaria of Samuel Taylor Coleridgewith whom Charles developed a friendship that would last for their entire lives. Despite the school's brutality, Lamb got along well there, due in part, perhaps, to the fact that his home was not far distant, thus enabling him, unlike many other boys, to return often to its safety. Years later, in his essay "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago", Lamb described these events, speaking of himself in the third person as "L".
at school; and can well recollect that he had some peculiar advantages, charles lamb essays, which I and other of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in town, and were near at hand; and he had the privilege of going to see them, almost as often as he wished, through some invidious distinction, which was denied to us. Christ's Hospital was a typical English boarding school and many students later wrote of the terrible violence they suffered there. The upper master i. principal or headteacher of the school from to was Reverend James Boyera man renowned for his unpredictable and capricious temper. In one famous story Boyer was said to have knocked one of Leigh Hunt's teeth out by throwing a copy of Homer at him from across the room.
Lamb seemed to have escaped much of this brutality, in part because of his amiable personality and in part because Samuel Salt, his father's employer and Lamb's sponsor at the school, was one of the institute's governors. Charles Lamb had a stutter and this "inconquerable impediment" in his speech deprived him of Grecian status at Christ's Hospital, thus disqualifying him for a clerical career. While Coleridge and other scholarly boys were able to go on to Cambridge, Lamb left school at fourteen and was forced to find a more prosaic career. For a short time he worked in the office of Joseph Paicea London merchant, charles lamb essays, and then, for 23 weeks, until 8 Februaryheld a small post in the Examiner's Office of the South Sea House, charles lamb essays.
Its subsequent downfall in a pyramid scheme after Lamb left the South Sea Bubble would be contrasted to the company's prosperity in the first Elia essay. On 5 April he went to work in the Accountant's Office for the British East India Companythe death of his father's employer having ruined the family's fortunes. Charles would continue to work there for 25 years, until his retirement with pension the "superannuation" he refers to in the title of one essay. In while tending to his grandmother, Mary Field, charles lamb essays, in Hertfordshire, Charles Lamb fell in love with a young woman named Ann Simmons.
Although no epistolary record exists of the relationship between the two, Lamb seems to have spent years wooing her. The record of the love exists in several accounts of Lamb's writing. Miss Simmons also appears in several Elia essays under the name "Alice M". The essays "Dream Children", "New Year's Eve", and several others, speak of charles lamb essays many years that Lamb spent pursuing his love that ultimately failed. Miss Simmons charles lamb essays went on to marry a silversmith and Lamb called the failure of the affair his "great disappointment". Both Charles and his sister Mary had a period of mental illness. As he himself confessed in a letter, Charles spent six weeks in a mental facility during Coleridge, I know not what suffering scenes you charles lamb essays gone through at Bristol.
My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton—I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one, charles lamb essays. But mad I was—and many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make a volume if all charles lamb essays. My Sonnets I have extended to the number of nine since I saw you, and will some day communicate to you. Mary Lamb's illness was more severe than her brother's, charles lamb essays, and it led her to become aggressive on a fatal occasion. On 22 Septemberwhile preparing dinner, Mary became angry with her apprentice, roughly shoving the little girl out of her way and pushing her into another room. Her mother, Elizabeth, began admonishing her for this, and Mary had a mental breakdown.
She took the kitchen knife she had been holding, unsheathed it, and approached her mother, who was sitting down. 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 in the heart with a table knife. Charles ran into the house soon after the murder and took the knife out of Mary's hand. Later in the evening, Charles found a local place for Mary in a private mental facility called Fisher House, which had been found with the help of a doctor friend of his. While reports were published by the media, Charles wrote a letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge in connection to the matricide:. MY dearest friend — White or some of my friends or the public papers by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family.
I will only give you the outlines. My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp, charles lamb essays. She is at present in a mad house, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me my senses, — I eat and drink and sleep, and have my judgment I believe very sound, charles lamb essays. My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt. Mr Norris of the Bluecoat school has been very very kind to us, and we have no other friend, but thank God I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do, charles lamb essays.
Write, —as religious a letter as possible— but no mention of what is gone and done with. Charles lamb essays almighty have us all in his keeping. Charles took over responsibility for Mary after refusing his brother John's suggestion that they have her committed to a public lunatic asylum. With the help of friends, Lamb succeeded in obtaining his sister's release from what would otherwise have been lifelong imprisonment. Although there was no legal status of "insanity" at the time, the jury returned the verdict of "lunacy" which was how she was freed from guilt of willful murder, on the condition that Charles take personal responsibility for her safekeeping. The death of John Lamb was something of a relief to Charles because his father had been mentally incapacitated for a number of years since having a stroke.
The death of his father also meant that Mary could come to live again with him in Pentonvilleand in they set up a shared home at Mitre Court Buildings in the Temple, where they would live until InMary's illness came back and Charles had to take her back again to the asylum. In those days, Charles sent a letter to Coleridge, in which he admitted he felt melancholic and lonely, adding "I almost wish that Mary were dead. Later she would come back, and both he and his sister would enjoy an active and rich social life. Their London quarters became a kind of weekly salon for many of the most outstanding theatrical and literary figures of the charles lamb essays. Ina club, The Lambswas formed in London to carry on their salon tradition.
The actor Henry James Montague founded the club's New York counterpart in Charles Lamb, having been to school with Samuel Coleridge, counted Coleridge as perhaps his closest, and certainly his oldest, friend. On his deathbed, Coleridge had a mourning ring sent to Lamb and his sister. Fortuitously, Lamb's first publication was inwhen four sonnets by "Mr Charles Lamb of the India House" appeared in Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects. In he contributed additional blank verse to the second edition, charles lamb essays, and met the Wordsworths, William and Dorothyon his short summer holiday with Coleridge at Nether Stoweycharles lamb essays, thereby also striking up a lifelong friendship with William.
In London, Lamb became familiar with a group of young writers who favoured political reform, including Percy Bysshe ShelleyWilliam HazlittLeigh Hunt and William Hone, charles lamb essays. Lamb continued to clerk for the East India Company and doubled as a writer in various genres, his tragedycharles lamb essays, John Woodvilbeing published in His farceMr Hwas performed at Drury Lane incharles lamb essays, where it was roundly booed. In the same year, Tales from Shakespeare Charles handled the tragedies; his sister Mary, the comedies was published, and became a best seller for William Godwin 's "Children's Library".
On charles lamb essays Julyat age 44, Lamb, who, because of family commitments, had never married, fell in love with an actress, Fanny Kellyof Covent Gardencharles lamb essays, and besides writing her a sonnet he also proposed marriage. His collected essays, under the title Essays of Eliawere published in "Elia" being the pen name Lamb used as a contributor to The London Magazine. The Essays of Elia would be criticised in the Quarterly Review January by Robert Southeywho thought its author to be irreligious. When Charles read the review, entitled "The Progress of Infidelity", he was filled with indignation, and wrote a letter to his friend Bernard Bartonwhere Lamb declared he hated the review, and emphasised that his words "meant no harm to religion".
First, Lamb did not want to retort, since he actually admired Southey; but later he felt the need to write a letter "Elia to Southey", in which he complained and expressed charles lamb essays the fact that he was a dissenter of the Church, did not make him an irreligious man. The letter would be published in The London Magazinein October Rightly taken, charles lamb essays, Sir, that Paper was not against Graces, but Want of Grace; not against the ceremony, but the carelessness and slovenliness so often observed in the performance of it. You have never ridiculed, I believe, what you thought to be religion, but you are always girding at what some pious, but perhaps mistaken folks, think to be so. A further collection called The Last Essays of Elia was published inshortly before Lamb's death.
Also, inSamuel Coleridge died. The funeral was charles lamb essays only to the family of the writer, so Lamb was prevented from attending and only wrote a letter to Rev. James Gilman, a very close [word missing], charles lamb essays, expressing his condolences.
Dream Children: A Reverie - Charles Lamb Essay Explained - English Literature Lessons
, time: 26:28Charles Lamb As An Essayist • English Notes
Web14/12/ · Thus, the essays of Charles Lamb contain many features – “refined and exquisite humour, a genuine and cordial vein of pleasantry, a heart touching pathos, a WebCheck out our charles lamb essays selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops Web19/07/ · His essays have the charm of poetry. Epigrammatic depth, ease, emotional flexibility allusiveness all mark the essays of Elia. Lamb’s style is natural and original. He
No comments:
Post a Comment