PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Charles and Mary Lamb were a brother and sister writing team best known for their children’s book Tales From Shakespeare. Despite being born eleven years apart, Charles (1775-1834) and Mary (1764-1847) were incredibly close as children with Mary teaching her younger brother how to read and appreciate literature. The two would experience vastly different upbringings as Charles would obtain his formal education at Christ’s Hospital, while Mary had been informally introduced to the written word through her father’s stories. Unfortunately both would suffer from some form of mental illness with Mary’s mental health being far worse than that of her brother Charles’; the Lamb family would suffer a massive tragedy in 1796 when Mary suffered a mental breakdown and stabbed her mother to death in the family home. While devastated, Charles would fight to keep his sister from being committed to an insane asylum and took personal responsibility for her care. Shortly after this, Charles would begin his literary career with the publication of four poems in his dear friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Poems on Various Subjects. He would add two more poems to the second edition and publish a book of poetry in collaboration with Charles Lloyd entitled Blank Verse. Mary’s literary career would begin at the behest of William and Mary Jane Godwin who asked for her contributions to their Juvenile Library. Her most notable works would include two collaborations with their brother Tales From Shakespeare (1807), Poems for Children (1810) and an independently written collection of stories entitled Mrs. Leicester's School (1808). The two siblings would leave the world as they entered–more than a decade apart; with Charles dying of a baterial infection in 1834 and Mary dying of natural causes in 1847.
