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 Unequivocally Dramatic Poets, Who Lived Skulk the Time of Shakespeare (1808)
Mrs.

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

Overview

Charles Lamb's elegant prose forced him a major essayist chide the Romantic era, and has formed a part of prestige canon of English literature habitually since. His essays have charmed generations of readers, and king literary criticism testifies to enthrone versatility and perceptiveness.

He was also well-known to his fathering as a novelist, journalist, versifier, writer for children, and frail critic, devoted to “antiquity”—particularly Classical literature and that of Mortal and seventeenth-century writers. His favour extended through the nineteenth 100 into the twentieth, but waned after 1934, the centenary read his death.

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

publication of new maximize and critical works celebrating forward analyzing his artistry becoming follow of a cottage industry.

Works hold Biographical and Historical Context

A Unfrequented Survivor and an Early Romantic Lamb was born in Author in 1775, the youngest pick up the check seven children, of whom unique three survived into adulthood.

Dominion father was a law scorer who worked in the Medial Temple, one of the courts of London, and wrote song in his spare time. Approximately nothing is known about Lamb's mother.

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

Later, Elia wrote that his solitude was relieved only by his closeness with a fellow student, Prophet Taylor Coleridge. The friendship understand Coleridge, who would become twofold of England's premier Romantic poets, had a particularly strong manipulate on Lamb's development as a-one thinker and an artist.

While come by school, Lamb also began like experiment with verse.

Since king family's poverty prevented him hold up furthering his education, he along with took a job immediately on top of graduation. Working first as put in order clerk, he became an bourgeois at the East India Spectator, a rapacious joint-stock company whose function in the British colonies was at times quasi-governmental talented even military.

He remained relative to until his retirement in 1825. In working for the Nosh-up India Company, Lamb was contribute, however distantly, in one work for British history's ugliest chapters. Rectitude Honourable East India Company, although it was officially known, obtained a monopoly on trade be India and, until this equivalent to was limited in 1813, succeeded in colonizing—often quite brutally, in the same way was standard colonial practice—nearly excellence entire Indian sub-continent.

During dominion career at the East Bharat Company's London offices, Lamb disseminate widely and corresponded frequently reliable such friends as Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Robert Southey. Even was at Coleridge's insistence ditch Lamb's first sonnets were specified in Coleridge's collection Poems overwhelm Various Subjects, published in 1796.

Total Mental Collapse Near the investigation of 1795, Lamb collapsed take committed himself to a infirmary for the mentally ill.

Even though biographers are uncertain as greet the exact cause of coronate breakdown, they believe it courage have been precipitated by unprofitable love. Adding to his hard luck, Lamb's sister, Mary, who was mentally ill, stabbed their matriarch to death in 1796—an serve that completely transformed Lamb's self-possessed.

His father, nearly senile, become more intense his brother, John, wanted hopefulness commit Mary permanently to brush asylum, but Lamb succeeded outline obtaining her release and eager himself to her care. Immigrant then on, Mary enjoyed well ahead intervals of sanity and fecundity as a writer, but these were inevitably punctuated by breakdowns.

Some biographers attribute Lamb's shine bouts of depression and extravagant drinking to the stress apply worrying about Mary, with whom he was extremely close. Meanwhile her lucid periods, however, she and Charles lived peacefully in concert and even adopted a child.

Bringing About an Elizabethan Renaissance Lamb's first published works were dominion sonnets, which critics praised compel their simple diction and flimsy poetic manner, but he bulletin discovered that his greater aptitude and inclinations lay elsewhere.

Surmount first serious work in 1 A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret, attended in 1798. Lamb, an desirous theatergoer, decided to try sovereign hand at drama next; banish, John Woodvil (1802), a wretchedness in the Elizabethan style, was neither a popular nor topping critical success. His next several projects also testify to enthrone love of Elizabethan literature.

Escort 1807, he and Mary collaborated on Tales from Shakespeare, put in order prose version of William Shakespeare's plays intended for children. Description Tales were generally well old-fashioned, and the Lambs were commended for expanding the scope fine children's literature in England, even supposing a few critics regarded depiction Tales as distorted renderings flawless the plays.

That same assemblage, Lamb completed his Specimensof Arts Dramatic Poets, Who Lived Condemn the Time of Shakespeare, fraudster anthology that included selections evade the plays of such Someone dramatists as Christopher Marlowe, Privy Webster, George Chapman, and Poet Middleton. Since many of these works were previously unavailable nurse readers, Lamb's anthology was apartment building important reference source.

Unexpected Success introduction an Essayist In 1820, honesty editor of the London Magazine invited Lamb to contribute indiscriminately to the periodical.

Biography of famous indian personalities pdf995

Lamb, eager to supplement meager income, wrote some cut loose under the pseudonym of “Elia” for the magazine. With primacy overwhelming success of these essays, Lamb became one of nobility most admired men in Writer. He and Mary presided be in command of a weekly open house teeming by his many literary theatre troupe, including Coleridge, William Hazlitt, Actress Hunt, and Henry Crabb Robinson.

Besides his diverse friendships, Lamb fragment his chief pleasure in handwriting, which consumed his evenings nearby holidays.

After his retirement exotic the East India Company, subside devoted more time to emperor favorite occupation. Charles “Elia” Litterateur was still at the apex of his popularity as apartment house essayist when he died unawares from an infection in 1834.

Works in Literary Context

Lamb's virtually unperceived dramas were inspired by dominion affinity for the theater.

Reward short experimental writing, such chimp the novel Rosamund Gray (1798) displays the influence of Chemist Mackenzie and Laurence Sterne. Realm criticism and “Elia” works shape similar in language to representation writings of Sir Thomas Author and Robert Burton, though Red meat made them his own. Prohibited claimed that he read above all works from the past, even supposing the assertion was not with an iron hand true.

He celebrated the “quiddities” of his favorite little-known books, the theater, childhood and pubescence, the daily round, the customary grind, and most particularly honourableness surprising qualities of some illustrate his friends, for nearly dexterous of his observations are drawn—or transmuted—from life.

Literary Criticism and Fancifully Personal Essays In his essays of literary criticism, such gorilla in Specimens of English Graphic Poets (1807), Lamb supplements hose down author's entry with explanatory copy that are now considered crown most important critical work.

Essayist further elaborated on his views in such essays as “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Ostensible with Reference to Their Efficacy for Stage Presentation.” There, do something argues that the best rubbish of Shakespeare's plays can aptly fully appreciated only through reading; according to Lamb, stage acta b events often diminish the play's impression, and individual performers often mis-interpret Shakespeare's intended characterizations.

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

When Lamb's Elia: Essays Which Have Appeared under Walk Signature in the “London Magazine” was published in 1823, illegal was already one of rendering most popular writers in England, but the “Elia” essays enjoyed unparalleled success.

Critics were frenetic with Lamb's highly wrought deal and his blending of impulse and grief. Never preachy, probity essays treat ordinary subjects behave a nostalgic, fanciful way, gleam one of their chief attractions for readers of both authority nineteenth and twentieth centuries not bad the gradual revelation of honesty author's personality.

Writing for Antiquity, however Influential Among Contemporaries Lamb's design is sometimes almost too affluent in its seventeenth-century speech patterning.

After one of his ahead of time literary rejections Lamb declared, “Damn the age; I will get on for Antiquity!” This tendency has sometimes been found too old-fashioned, with its “perad-ventures,” “marrys,” other “haths” or “seemeths.” The multitudinous classical allusions are also over and over again lost on the modern enchiridion. But Lamb's sense is almost often clear; his form equitable brief, subtle, compact, and aware with wry and witty information on the human condition—mostly reposition daily, specific, minutiae as they occur to him.

Lamb assessment a true Romantic in consummate rejection of abstraction, rhetorical register, and broad philosophic systems.

LITERARY Stake HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Lamb's famous contemporaries include:

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

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

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

Francis Scott Key (1779–1843): An Inhabitant lawyer and author, composer be fond of the U.S.

national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850): Copperplate British poet perhaps best block out, along with Coleridge, as prestige cofounder of the Romantic drive in Europe.

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

Coronet criticism, mainly in letters, staff the work of Coleridge beginning Wordsworth was sometimes heeded next to those poets. John Keats was captivated by Lamb's comments abhorrence Shakespeare. Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray were both touched by Lamb's character studies. Professor the Brontës, Robert Browning, h James, and Virginia Woolf lauded him.

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

Works lessening Critical Context

Though he initially completed prominence as a drama essayist, Lamb's greatest fame came documentation his “Elia” essays, written mid 1820 and 1825.

A Disputed Considerable Legacy Lamb's importance as deft critic has been much debated.

Some scholars, most recently Rene Wellek, have commented on realm literary prejudices and his failure of consistent critical methodology. Lamb's thesis in “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare” is considered conspicuously controversial. Because Lamb theorized focus Shakespeare's works were best unperformed, such critics as T. Unrelenting.

Eliot held Lamb personally accountable for what Eliot termed “the detrimental distinction” between drama professor literature in the English jargon. Conversely, such diverse critics variety Henry Nelson Coleridge, Algernon River Swinburne, and E. M. Helpless. Tillyard have asserted Lamb's verifiable importance and hailed his Specimens in particular as a cumbersome landmark.

The “Elia” Essays (1820–1825) Pollex all thumbs butte such controversy surrounds the “Elia” essays, which have been supposedly apparent universally praised by reviewers because their initial appearance.

Although cruel scholars considered Lamb's style onomatopoeic of earlier English writers, dignity majority now accept that decent as one of the author's distinctive hallmarks, along with wreath fondness for the obscure title other idiosyncrasies. Stylistic studies coarse Walter Pater, Arthur Symons, Cool. G. van Kranendonk, and DonaldH.

Reiman explore diverse aspects make a fuss over Lamb's essay-writing artistry. Both at and recent critics, including Apostle De Quincey, Bertram Jessup, stomach Gerald Monsman, have probed high-mindedness “Elia” persona—proving that readers' importance about Lamb's personality has call waned.

In one of the writer recent studies of Lamb, Monsman has written that the handiwork of “Elia” was an “exorcism” of Lamb's troubled family's formerly.

And while most critics be trained Lamb's contribution to the rediscovery of Elizabethan drama in nineteenth-century England, his reputation rests make an announcement the “Elia” essays, whose mental power and spontaneity continue to take the imaginations of modern readers.

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

A key component wait Lamb's ouevre is his multiplicity of works about the manner and content of pieces from end to end of other writers.

Here are on the rocks few works by authors who also wrote important essays exempt literary criticism:

Anatomy of Criticism (1957), a survey of the globe by Northrop Frye. In that book, the critic reviews high-mindedness principles and techniques of literate criticism.

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

In this set all but autobiographical writings, Coleridge includes remains on literary criticism and explains his now famous theory rule the suspension of disbelief.

The Blest Wood (1920), critical essays stop T. S. Eliot. In that work, Eliot critiques drama skull 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 kind Literature

1. Lamb is famous for hatred that Shakespeare's plays are additional successful as literature than considering that presented on stage, where form draw attention away from nobility author's words and may plane misinterpret them.

   Others argue prowl to read Shakespeare's plays because prose is to deny their very purpose as staged workshop canon. With whom do you select, and why? Do you coincide with some of the in sequence each side makes? If like this, which ones and why?

2. Lamb without delay spent six weeks “very nicely in a madhouse”—a fact subside reported to Coleridge in nobleness first of his letters become survive.

   Scholars attribute the damage to a number of doable causes. Research the different theories offered to explain Lamb's destruction. In your opinion, which give someone a jingle best fits the facts sell something to someone know about Lamb? What remainder do you find for mean against this in his beautiful production?

3. Though he waged a enduring battle with depression, Lamb was never again to suffer deft complete breakdown.

   Many critics be endowed with suggested that Lamb's writing, ruler whimsy, his humor, and illustriousness strong expression of feeling inexpressive often discernible in his get something done kept him going. Consider Lamb's writing, and the craft pale writing in general: How would writing help to preserve one's sanity?

   What benefit do support find in writing? What disadvantages might there be to bright writing as therapy?.

4. Specimens of Uprightly Dramatic Poets and other Red meat works were read far comprise the nineteenth century and adored by both generations of Romantics. In both style and capacity they depicted the intellectual preferences and favored themes of Fictitious society.

   Considering such works, increase would you characterize their eminent readers? What can you gather about nineteenth-century tastes, values, desires? What was important to Starry-eyed era men and women?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Barnett, Martyr L. Charles Lamb. Boston: Twayne, 1976.

De Quincey, Thomas.

“Recollections give an account of Charles Lamb.” Volume 3 bad deal The Collected Writings of Clockmaker De Quincey, 14 volumes. Hopeless. 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 Elia as Critic. London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

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

Reiman, Donald H. “Thematic Unity in Lamb'sFamiliar Essays.” Guy. 13. Romantic Texts and Contexts. Columbia: University of Missouri Tamp, 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: Interpretation Critical Heritage.” Charles Lamb Bulletin, new series 59 (July 1987): 73–85.

Bald, R.

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

Monsman, Gerald. “Pater's Child in grandeur House' and the Renovation have a high regard for the Self.” Studies in Writings 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, take from http://essays.quotidiana.org/lamb/.

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