Lamb, Mary Anne (1764–1847)

English author who, with her brother, wrote the popular Tales of Shakespeare. Born in London, England, on December 3, 1764; died at St. John's Wood, London, on May 20, 1847; daughter of John Lamb (a servant and clerk) and Elizabeth (Field) Lamb; sister of Charles Lamb (1775–1834, an author); educated at a day school in Fleet Street, London; children: (with her brother Charles) adopted an orphan girl named Emma Isola , daughter of an official at Cambridge University (1823).

There was a taint of insanity in the impoverished family of Mary Anne Lamb. Of seven siblings,

only three survived infancy. Mary Lamb resided with her brother Charles until his death, except when fits of insanity caused her removal to an asylum, which, through the years, increased in frequency. On September 22, 1796, during a manic phase, Mary wounded her senile father John and killed her invalid mother Elizabeth Field Lamb by stabbing her in the heart. Declared insane at an inquest, Mary was removed to Hoxton under restraints. The next day, Charles, who had also been briefly confined in an institution for six weeks (1795–96), wrote to his friend Samuel Coleridge:

My poor dear dearest sister in a fit of insanity has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. She is at present in a mad house, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital…. My poor father was slightly wounded.

But the following year, Charles, who had to forgo a planned marriage with Ann Simmons of Hertfordshire, persuaded the authorities to make his sister his ward, and Mary Anne moved in with him. He wrote Coleridge:

My poor dear dearest sister, the unhappy & unconscious instrument of the Almighty's judgments to our house, is restored to her senses; to a dreadful sense & recollection of what has past, awful to her mind & impressive (as it must be to the end of life) but temper'd with religious resignation, & the reasonings of a sound judgment, which in this early stage knows how to distinguish between a deed committed in a transcient fit of frenzy, & the terrible guilt of a Mother's murther…. She has a most af fectionate & tender concern for what has happened.

Mary Lamb wrote a few slight poems, but her principal work, the immensely popular Tales from Shakespeare (1807), was written in conjunction with her brother. Charles delighted in insisting that her stories were the best of the collection. He wrote the tragedies; she, the comedies. The Lambs also collaborated on poetry for children.

When well, Mary Lamb was remarkably placid and had a sweet disposition; the mutual devotion of brother and sister was beautiful and sometimes pathetic. On Charles Lamb's death in 1834, the East India Company granted Mary the pension to which a widow was entitled, and her brother had also made her comfort secure by his own savings as a clerk. Mary Anne Lamb survived her brother by 13 years and was buried beside him at Edmonton. Dorothy Parker wrote The Coast of Illyria, a play based on the life Mary Lamb.

suggested reading:

Marrs, Edwin W., Jr. The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb: Volume I, Letters of Charles Lamb, 1796–1801. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975.