Charles Lamb Biography

Charles Lamb was born in London in 1775. He studied at Christ's Hospital where he formed a lifelong friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. When he was twenty years old Lamb suffered a period of insanity. His sister, Mary Ann Lamb, had similar problems and in 1796 murdered her mother in a fit of madness. Mary was confined to an asylum but was eventually released into the care of her brother.

Lamb became friends in London with a group of young writers who favoured political reform including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, Henry Brougham, Lord Byron, Thomas Barnes and Leigh Hunt. In 1796 Lamb contributed four sonnets to Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796). This was followed by Blank Verse (1798) and Pride's Cure (1802).

Lamb worked for the East India Company in London but managed to contribute articles to several journals and newspapers including London Magazine, The Morning Chronicle, The Morning Post and the The Quarterly Review. Charles Lamb died in 1834.