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Lamb, Charles

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
English essayist and critic. He collaborated with his sister Mary Lamb (1764–1847) on Tales from Shakespeare (1807), and his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare, with Notes (1808) revealed him as a penetrating critic and helped to revive interest in Elizabethan plays. As ‘Elia’ he contributed essays to the London Magazine from 1820 (collected 1823 and 1833). Lamb's essays are still widely read and admired; they include ‘A Dissertation on Roast Pig’, ‘Mrs Battle's Opinions on Whist’, ‘Dream Children’, and ‘The Supernatural Man’. He was born in the Temple, London, and was educated at Christ's Hospital. As a friend of Coleridge, some of his poems were included in the second edition of Poems on Various Subjects (1797). He was a clerk with the East India Company at India House 1792–1825, when he retired to Enfield. His sister Mary stabbed their mother to death in a fit of insanity in 1796, and Charles cared for her between her periodic returns to an asylum. …
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Full text Article Lamb, Charles

From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
Lamb was born a Londoner and staunchly remained so for all his life with a few forays outside the city. He told William WORDSWORTH in 1801 that “I often shed tears in the motley Strand from fullness of joy at so much life . . . My attachments are all local, purely local—I have no passion . . . to…
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Full text Article Lamb, Charles

From Philip's Encyclopedia
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Full text Article LAMB, CHARLES 1775-1834

From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
Charles Lamb was a critic and essayist whose literary career successfully spanned both generations of British Romanticism: his first published work, four sonnets in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects, came in 1796; his most famous, the Essays of Elia (published initially in the…
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English essayist and critic. Together with his sister Mary, he wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807), and his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets (1808) contributed to a revival of interest in Elizabethan plays. As ‘Elia’, he contributed essays to the London Magazine from 1820. I have something more…
| 1,320 words
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Full text Article LAMB, Charles (1775–1834)

From The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature
and Mary (Anne) (1764–1847) Charles Lamb and his sister Mary wrote a number of books for children, of which the most celebrated was their adaptation of Shakespeare for young readers. Their father was a London lawyer's clerk. Charles went to school at Christ's Hospital, where he became friends with…
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Full text Article Lamb, Charles (1775–1834)

From The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales
British critic, essayist, and poet, also known for hosting literary circles frequented by Coleridge and Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, and Robert Southey. Over the course of his lifetime, Lamb cared for his sister Mary who, in a moment of insanity, killed their mother in 1796. Together…
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Full text Article Lamb, Charles (1775–1834).

From The Oxford Companion to British History
The mild and gentle character of Lamb is fresh air among the abrasive and arrogant men of letters of the early 19th cent. He was born in London, spent his ‘joyful schooldays’ at Christ's Hospital, and earned his living as a clerk in the East India House. Much of his life was devoted to caring for…
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Full text Article Charles Lamb 1775–1834

From The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
English essayist and writer. On Lamb: see coleridge , hazlitt If the husband be a man with whom you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage,—if you did not come in on the wife's side,—if you did not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old friend in first habits of intimacy before…
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Full text Article Charles Lamb (1775–1834)

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
An archangel a little damaged. Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in a letter to William Wordsworth, 1816 The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. ‘Table Talk by the late Elia’ I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices – made up of likings…
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Full text Article SCIENCE, MARCH OF

From Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
English essayist and critic Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat? In Talfourd, Thomas Noon The Works of Charles Lamb: To which are Prefixed His Letters, and a Sketch of His Life (Volume 1…
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