Review Hefty biographical treatment of Charles and Mary Lamb, luminaries of early nineteenth-century literary life, authors of Tales from Shakespeare (1807), key figures in the romantic movement. This inseparable brother and sister were acquainted with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, William Hazlitt, Mary Shelley, William Godwin, Thomas de Quincey and many other now less well known figures in the history of romanticism. But Mary suffered bouts of insanity and Charles was an alcoholic, conditions brought on by a terrible family event that cast a long shadow over their lives. A work of serious scholarship, particularly good on the early treatment of madness, with plenty of footnotes yet also eminently readable. And the terrible event, while no great secret, is still shocking more than 200 years later. Synopsis Charles and Mary Lamb were part of London's famous literary network in the early 19th century. But they were also siblings tied together by a horrific event. In September 1796, Mary murdered her mother with a carving knife during a fit of insanity as the family prepared for dinner. Charles, who was only 21 at the time, took it upon himself to care for his sister throughout her life as she swung between sanity and madness. Meanwhile, Charles also suffered from severe depressions and alcoholism and at one point had to admit himself to the Hoxton madhouse. This account of Charles and Mary Lamb reaches to the heart of early 19th-century London, meeting its eccentrics and its literary giants. It also visits the city's darker corners, where poverty stalked rented rooms and madhouses concealed terrible abuse. See all Product description
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