About the author
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Charles Lamb was the son of John and Elizabeth Lamb. He was the seventh and youngest child in the family. Of his brothers and sisters only one brother ,named John and one sister named Mary Anne survived. Charles Lamb was born on February 10, 1775 in Crown Office Row, Inner Temple in the house of the employer of his father, named Samuel Salt. We are given description of his brother and sister in Two of Lamb’s well known essays .Lamb never talks about his father and mother , except once to tell the reader in ‘My Relations’ that his parents have been the fact that the father later suffered from insanity and the mother was killed by the sister in a fit of madness.
Although Charles Lamb was best known to his contemporaries for his essays published under the pseudonym "Elia," his place in the annals of children's literature rests on Tales from Shakespear (1807), which appeared under his name but which was mainly written by his sister, Mary. It has remained in print and has succeeded in drawing children into Shakespeare's world as well as into the individual universe of each play. However, the literary reputation of Charles and Mary Lamb has been influenced by the central facts of their lives: Mary's debilitating mental illness for much of her adult life and Charles's immeasurable affection for and enduring relationship with his sister, a relationship that led to successful collaboration on two collections of children's stories: Tales from Shakespear and Mrs. Leicester's School (1809).
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Charles's power as a storyteller resides in his ability to explain the psychological motives underlying an act. His representation of Lady Macbeth is succinct, yet provides a wealth of information: "She was a bad, ambitious woman, and so as her husband and herself could arrive at greatness, she cared not by what means. She spurred on the reluctant purpose of Macbeth ... and did not cease to represent the murder of the king as a step absolutely necessary to the fulfillment of the flattering prophecy." The tone and sense of suspense, however, urge the reader on, despite the fact that Charles has revealed much about Lady Macbeth's nature.
The stories were originally published in discrete illustrated booklets; then a two-volume set was published under Charles Lamb's name, titled Tales from Shakespear. Designed for the Use of Young Persons. Godwin printed five editions during the first ten years of the series' existence in order to meet demand. The stories have been available to young readers since 1807. -
Twentieth-century critics, however, also focusing mainly on his essays, find Charles Lamb's writing difficult to praise. The proliferation of celebratory anthologies in 1934, the centenary of Charles Lamb's death, drew the unsympathetic eyes of the modern British critics, who had promoted the study of English literature as a rigorous intellectual activity. Denys Thompson, in "Our Debt to Lamb" states that Charles Lamb's Elia essays represent "a falling away from the more rigorous eighteenth-century essay which attempted to improve the reader's 'spiritual manners' by disturbing his complacency." Much more damaging to Lamb's reputation were Thompson's claim, in his widely distributed scholastic guide to criticism, Reading and Discrimination, that Lamb had reduced the eighteenth-century essay to "a vehicle for charming whimsies" and his elimination of Lamb's essays in later editions of the guide. In America New Critics resented the overly subjective nature of Lamb's essays. Lamb's reputation has never fully recovered from such disparagement, and despite the continued vitality of the Charles Lamb Society, scholars and students today may complete Romantic or Victorian studies without having read a single Elia essay.