| Title | : | Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0393327531 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780393327533 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 333 |
| Publication | : | First published December 28, 2004 |
Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London Reviews
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In 1796, a middle aged bipolar woman caring for her elderly parents snapped and mortally wounded her mother, leading to a declaration of lunacy and a stay at a private mental institution. Eventually Mary is released and her younger brother, Charles, makes it his lifelong responsibility to care for her. This book is the story of their relationship and their budding writing careers.
Charles lamb is known today as one of Britain's most popular essayists of his generation and is still studied today. In partnership with his sister, he wrote children's books. One, a storytelling of Shakespeare's plays, has been continuously published since 1807 and will be my nieces' Christmas present. -
I hadn't read any works by either Charles or Mary Lamb prior to reading this biography of their lives together. Brother and older sister -- which one was the true caretaker of the other? Mary, who murdered their mother? Charles, who forgave Mary and even excused her? Mary, who may been bipolar? Charles, who spent many an evening with literary colleagues...and liquor? A very fascinating and tragic story.
Passages and my reflection...
...Charles Lamb speaking of friend, John Rickman: "the finest fellow to drop in a nights about nine or ten oClock, cold bread & cheese time, just in the wishing time of the night, when you wish for someone to come in, without a distinct idea of a probable anybody." (p 112)
"In and out of the scene wandered Samuel Taylor Coleridge...he was prone to 'Coleridgizing,' as Charles Lamb liked to say, dominating all conversation with his fascinating self-referential, transcendental monologues." (p 113)
...from a letter written by Mary Lamb: "I have lost all self confidence in my own actions...I never feel satisfied with anything I do--a perception of not being in a sane state perpetually haunts me...which as I am so sensible of I ought to strive to conquer." (p 153)
"She cycled into irrationality, 'sadly rambling,' as Charles put it...only loosely connected to the people and world around her." (p 256)
...Charles, writing about Mary: "When she is not violent, her rambling chat is better to me than the sense and sanity of this world. Her heart is not obscurred, not buried; it breaks out occasionally; and one can discern a strong mind struggling with the billows that have gone over it." (p 262)
This story, so fascinating and yet so tragic...how different it might have been for Mary today, with mental health treatments being advanced. And yet that last quote reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend whose son suffers with schizophrenia. This year, I will walk with her -- the annual Walk for Mental Health on Santa Monica beach. We will walk, we will talk -- and we will pray for those whose lives are "sadly rambling."
More Quotes:
"Much depends upon when and where you read a book. In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons ?
Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears.
Winter evenings -- the world shut out -- with less of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a season, the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale --
These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud -- to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person listening. More than one -- and it degenerates into an audience.
Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do to read them out. I could never listen to even the better kind of modern novels without extreme irksomeness." (from DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING, Charles Lamb) -
I am fascinated by the Lambs. Life is truly stranger than fiction here: Mary (the sister) went crazy, killed her mother with a kitchen knife (!) and wounded her father. Charles (the brother) saved her from a life in the mad house by becoming her guardian (though Mary occasionally backslid and had to do stints in asylums throughout her life). Mary and Charles had a circle of friends that included Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, collaborated on
Tales from Shakespeare and separately published other (once fairly popular) works. They lived contentedly together and neither ever married (that part is a bit sad).
I basically see them as River and Simon Tam from Firefly: the brilliant but crazy sister, the devoted and stalwart brother. Though I do have to ignore that unlike the TV show, Mary and Charles were fairly unattractive and Mary was the older sibling (by 11 years). Plus, the Lambs had an older brother (John) who was never really around (seems like if it was up to him, his inconvenient sister Mary could've rotted in the asylum, though he was mostly a vague figure in Hitchcock's book).
I read the horrid fictional account of the Lamb siblings (
The Lambs of London) and decided to tackle a biography of Mary next. This biography was a little drier than I expected. It's hard to tell what makes a truly excellent biography, like
Nicholas and Alexandra or
Marie Antoinette: The Journey; those books read like novels and managed to give the reader a sense of the historical figures as people you could actually know. This book doesn't do that. It gets the job done in terms of telling the story of Mary & Charles, but I never really felt like I got inside their heads. The author seems hesitant to give firm conclusions which I can understand (because in history so much is speculation, especially as to what people were actually thinking) , but it keeps Mary & Charles at a distance. It also gets bogged down a bit by parsing the wording of the Lambs' writing. I think that there's not very much information on the Lambs and so analyzing their writing could give important insights into them. But the way it was done in the book felt more like an English assignment than an exciting biography.
So, overall, it's a decent biography. I learned about the Lambs, which was the point. It wasn't gripping, but it was informative. -
Full review to follow
This book dragged for me. What started out as an interesting history lost focus and overrated it’s welcome. It didn’t have enough of a pov for me to care.
There were too many quotes which made this seem like more of compilation of letters from Charles Lamb, than a book with much research. I couldn’t tell you what this book’s thesis statement was. I guess I learnt more about Mary Lamb, which was good, but the writing was so dull that it was a struggle to get through.
It was ok I guess - mostly because I did learn some new things about the Lambs. But the title of Mad Mary Lamb promised me a more riveting tale than this was. Glad I finally finished it though. -
4,25 stars - English Ebook
After killing her mother with a carving knife, Mary Lamb spent the rest of her life in and out of madhouses; yet the crime and its aftermath opened up a new life.
Freed to read extensively, she discovered her talent for writing and, with her brother, the essayist Charles Lamb, collaborated on the famous Tales from Shakespeare.
This narrative of a nearly forgotten woman is a tapestry of insights into creativity and madness, the changing lives of women, and the redemptive power of the written word.
In 1796 Mary Lamb thrust a knife into her mother's chest, in that instant breaking free of the drudgery that consumed her days, but at what cost? Sent to Fisher House, a private, quasi-affordable madhouse in Islington, Mary underwent the usual brutal and humiliating treatments dictated by science at the time, similar to those King George III was subjected to ten years before. Whether the madhouse experience damaged her creatively is still a source of discussion, but certainly she fell into line, causing no further disturbance, eventually moving into rooms of her own with the help of her younger brother, Charles Lamb. Eventually Charles and Mary Lamb devised a manner of living, what he called "double-singleness", Mary accepted into her brother's literary circle and appreciated for her sharp intelligence and intellectual curiosity. Together they co-authored three books, Tales from Shakespear (1807), Mrs. Leicester's School (1809) and Poetry for Children (1809).
Mad Mary Lamb is an extensively researched, impressive reconstruction of Mary's life on the fringes of literary society, freed by the act that sundered her from family obligations beyond the society of her brother. London was teeming with literary genius, the country infused with political uncertainty and a rapidly changing world where ideas were exchanged in lively debate in salons all over the city. Most women were hidden behind society's restraints, great literary achievements solely the purview of the male gender. While Charles moved in and out of his own creative forays, Mary nurtured seeds of her own writing. Her contribution to Tales of Shakespear was certainly equal to her brother's, a challenging task in any case. Mary's ability to empathize enabled her to step inside the identities of others: "It was her deep and sympathetic feeling, coupled with her intellect, that brought her admiration from men of such high standards as Coleridge."
What Mad Mary Lamb points out most succinctly is the blossoming of her writing life after the tragic event of the murder. Her creativity stifled by a spinster's role in society that relegated her to little more than a domestic servant, albeit to family, the murder offered Mary a unique opportunity she might otherwise not have known.
Never audacious or brave enough to tackle the more dangerous boundaries, Mary Lamb transgressed just enough to participate in a lively literary life, at the side of her prolific brother, Charles Lamb, who was also an accomplished essayist.
In this book the detail is extraordinary and extensive, with copious notes, bibliography and index, Mary Lamb brought to life on these pages, her crime, tentative reach toward life and the fulfilling world of writing afforded by a violent transgression against society's most basic tenant. -
I enjoyed this book about Mary Lamb. I wasn't all that familiar with Charles Lambs writings, only the name. I can't see that he was all that witty, but of course it was a different time and different humor. I did find reading about Mary's madness and how they dealt with it pretty interesting. Without knowing too terribly much about psychiatric malady's, it was pretty plain that she was bi polar, or some such along those lines. I'm not sure how you murder your mother and not wind up in jail or hanged, but they put her in a madhouse for a short period of time...which started the pattern of her life in and out of madhouses. When she wasn't nuts, she did accomplish quite a bit. Certainly she and her brother hung with some of the foremost people of their day. I've always been interested in Mary Wallstonecraft Godwin...and although she was pretty much gone by the point that the Lambs came into Godwin's circle, it seems that Mary Lamb was pretty good at getting her own vindication for the rights of women. Go Mary! I appreciated the research that went into the book, and it's written well, were it not for the holiday season, I would have finished it much sooner, because it really goes right along!
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This was the most disjointed repetitive mess I’ve ever read. I came very close to DNF, and really wish I had. Apparently Charles and Mary Lamb were so delightful they had so many friends their dinner parties were legendary. Charles lamb was considered witty, some of the greatest contemporary literary minds were their best friends. From reading this book I have no idea why. The book starts with the fact that poor Mary, overwhelmed and put upon by her family stabs her mother to death and periodically ends up treated in madhouses for the rest of her life. Several pages dedicated to treatment of mental illness in 1790s. Read like a poorly organized boring college paper. Based on this book I would never want to read anything Charles or Mary Lamb ever wrote.
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This the worst kind of biography: it forgoes discipline, style, and scholarship and, instead, relies on its sensational subject to tell a tale. I made it through 4 chapters.
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The subject was awful: caught with a knife right after she stabbed her mother? Non-contested conclusion. Forget the Lizzie Borden saga (did she? or didn't she?) -- this gal should have gotten "an eye for an eye." I don't care how literate she turned out to be.
And the book? The writing was awful, twisted, round-a-bout, unclear, on and on and on. ugh. This whole thing could have been condensed to 25 pages, or less! -
Thin scholarship and sloppy writing made me put this one down after just a few chapters. Hitchcock seems to have gathered random tidbits into loosely structured chapters that don't seem to address much of anything in particular. Even within the scope of individual paragraphs, she loses focus. It's almost reads like a dustbin of endnotes!
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Although informative, this account of the life of Mary Lamb and her brother Charles was far more dry than it needed to be. I had a hard time keeping my attention focused on the narrative, and often wished that there were more supplemental material about the time period than was provided.
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I had all the best intentions to finish this book, but I just lost interest. It seemed muddled with historic fact that distracted from the story. Almost as if it was filling a void.
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An okay book about a couple of people with whom I was mostly unfamiliar, though I was aware of essayist Charles Lamb's (1775 - 1834) well-known humorous piece, "A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig," which I read when I was in grade school. Turns out he had a sister who murdered their mother and spent the rest of her life in and out of asylums, called "madhouses" back then. Mary Lamb was a talented woman but she had demons, let us say. And Charles himself spent six weeks in one in 1795. He was good friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who also knew Mary and her work. She was also a friend of the poet Wordsworth and for a woman of her time, was able to participate in a life of letters, which would have been normally impossible for a woman of her class and time. She and her brother collaborated on several books, including the successful "Tales from Shakespeare." Even so, this book is only intermittently interesting. It was a struggle to get through it. I rather doubt I'd have any reason to read it again unless I was doing research on that time in British letters.
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I’d heard of Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare (1807) as I’d bought an antique copy as a graduation gift for my son then later found out it was also the first book my mum ever bought with her own money. It was written by brother and sister duo, Charles and Mary (Mary apparently writing the bulk of the stories). Earlier in their lives their family lived through tragedy when Mary, suffering from mental illness, stabbed and killed her mother on evening in 1796. Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London starts with the murder before recounting stories of Charles and Mary’s subsequent writing and friendships with those in literary circles including the other famous brother and sister William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Mostly it shows the love and concern Charles had for his older sister who, when she wasn’t in an asylum for her frequent (usually a month or so each year) bouts of mental illness, lived with Charles until his death. An interesting read.
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Five things about Mad Mary Lamb by Susan Tyler Hitchcock 📚📚📚📚📚
1. I did it! I finally read this book that’s been on my TBR since 2015! Never, never, never give up!
2. I don’t know why it took so long for me to do it, it’s a fascinating biography and look into mental illness and women’s lives in Victorian society.
3. Mary Lamb had a single psychotic episode in her 30s that resulted in the stabbing death of her invalid mother. This is her story. The thirty years before that pivotal moment and the decades following it.
4. Mary lived the second half of her life under the care of her brother Charles. They were writers. They moved in circles with likes of Godwin and Wordsworth.
5. Although her name was left off the book for most of her life, Charles was always quick to tell that Mary was mainly responsible for the Lamb’s Shakespeare retellings that are still widely reread to this day. -
The Lambs have always been of interest to me since I read Charles Lamb's poetry and letters on a whim in the 1990s. I had stumbled across a collection of Charles writing, the his and Mery's Shakespeare works compilation. I knew Mary had killed her mother via the short bio on the backs of these collections. The author of this book explained a bit more which is what I needed to break the iconic view of Charles Lamb that I have carried so long and to break the spell Mary seemed to have over me. I liked this book.
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Very intrigues forthird of book. Kept wanting a better explanation of how Mary knew her illness was coming on; how they treated her in institution and , what made doctors think she was well enough to go on. Then, the account got bogged done with too many other details of their literary life. Was going to stick through it, but decided to ski to the end to see if author gives own view.
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Read this for book club. A difficult book for anyone not enamoured with either literature or literary history. I enjoyed it though the author had meager info to draw upon and often sounded repetitive. Still, a fascinating bit of history I never knew existed.
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I love true crime, but this unusual story is shockingly boring. The crime (luckily) is described early in the book; I gave up shortly after.
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Unexpectedly educational. Really enjoyed this one.
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"Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London" begins with the September 1796 murder of elderly Elizabeth Lamb. Her spinster daughter, Mary, snapped under the strain of caring for her aging parents and aunt, and reacted to a caustic remark by plunging a carving knife deep into Mrs. Lamb's chest. Mary was confined in a private lunatic asylum for several weeks, and spent the rest of her life juggling literary brilliance and debilitating insanity. Her champion was her brother, famous essayist and poet Charles Lamb, with whom she lived until his death in 1834.
Charles and Mary Lamb co-authored a children's book called Tales from Shakespeare, which became a bestseller and remained in print for many years. Together and separately, the Lambs produced children's books, poetry collections, and magazine and newspaper articles. Their success made them central figures in an energetic writers' and artists' circle that included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and William Hazlitt.
The book is well-written but the title is somewhat misleading. It's not a work of True Crime per se: "Mad Mary Lamb" is both a biography of the Lamb siblings and a history of early nineteenth England's literary establishment. But Susan Tyler Hitchcock advances the intriguing argument that the act of matricide freed Mary to become a 'woman of letters'. As a mental patient, she experienced few of the expectations or demands that women of her era traditionally dealt with, leaving her free to undertake the unconventional role of female writer. The death of her mother was the birth of her literary career. -
On my Goodreads shelf for over a year and I read it in about 8 hours-which is amazing for me because I don't read non-fiction very quickly.
Mary’s act of matricide is barely mentioned beyond after the first chapter. Instead the book focuses on Mary’s life after the murder. Her writing, her work with her brother, her socializing with poets and writers of the age, and her short stays in asylums throughout the rest of her life.
A good read for anyone interested in the writers and writing of the time period. A small window into the lives of creative women at this time period.
I liked Mary. She seemed like a rather quiet type who observed a great deal, and was sympathetic to people’s weaknesses. She seemed timid of making friends, but she was a loyal and witty correspondent once she did. Though her confinement to mental institutions was not a secret many of her contemporaries did not know of the crime.
The one part of this book I do take issue with is that the author seemed to overemphasize that Mary’s act of murder allowed her to break through convention and participate in activities, like writing, that she otherwise would not have been permitted to do. While on some level I can see that psychologically Mary had to break free from her mother, a woman portrayed as demanding and unloving towards Mary, I think that author tries too hard to ignore, or convince the reader to ignore, that this was a violent act done by a mentally unstable woman. -
Overall, I did quite like this book. It too me considerably longer to finish than I expected, and I don't know if that's life getting in the way or the pace of the book itself. I found the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the book really enjoyable. Then I felt the book slowed, considerably. It seemed like the long, block quotations (from letters or printed works by both the Lambs) and the introduction of important people became more frequent. There were a LOT of names, and not all of them names I recognized or were able to keep straight later on. The last 1/4 of the book - as it neared the end and, unfortunately, how things turned out for both Mary Lamb and her brother - things started to pick up. The pace picked up and I began to care again about what happened to her. Not that I didn't care, but things started to get bogged down with the play-by-play (much of which was a lot of hypothesis) regarding how the Lambs split their writing work, along with an account of (what felt like) every single time Mary was committed plus her brother's thoughts on it (which were pretty much the same every time) and it made me want to skip a lot of the middle part - and I'll admit it, I did a lot of skimming in that section. But from a literary and feminist standpoint, the book was pretty good.
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Until now I was unaware of Charles Lamb having a sister and this book gave me a faint picture of who she was and the circumstances of their mother's murder. However, with so little resources available now (or ever) about Mary the author can only really explain her through her brother's letters and the society of the times. I wanted so much to hear her own voice and what she thought of her own life and actions.
Still I am left giving this 2 stars because the work done in the book just consisted of too many "perhapses" and guesses as to what she and Charles may have been feeling. The author worked with such little information she had and seemed to be forced to assume the rest. Maybe some things from history just cannot be pieces of scholarly work and try to be published as a popular best selling book at the same time. It seemed to want to associate itself with so many of the other current historical "true-crime" books that are being produced today and this book just didn't have the information there to paint a true portrait. -
A biography of a footnote character. Mary Lamb is remembered now for writing, with her brother, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. But years before that, in a manic episode, she killed their mother. Charles Lamb saw that she was sent to a good madhouse, and when she regained her sanity, she came to live with him as his housekeeper and companion. Besides the Tales, they collaborated on poems and stories for children, and she wrote books for children on her own. Their friends were other creative people like Godwin, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Every couple of years Mary would be unwell in mind and have to spend a few weeks at a madhouse.
The author's thesis is that Mary Lamb is a pioneering figure in womens' literature. I'm not convinced. This is one of those books that would make a great magazine article but feels forced as a book, and I was glad to finish it. -
Fascinating, one of the best biographies that I can remember.
It gives not just a portrait of famous sibling's "double singleness" but a perspective of London's literary scene some 200 years ago, publishing trends and fashions, moral codes that ruled behavior and along the way we get a glimpse at mental institutions of the time. In all, Mary Lamb was saved from life of misery by her kind and loving brother who took her under his protection, even if this burden cost him his own family life (apparently no one was willing to marry him and take care of bi-polar sister). Very well written with a lot of research, best of all, it does not appear dry or academic but its truly interesting read. I can still visualize Mary Lamb hauling coal and water five flights of stairs to their attic lodgings. -
Discovered this book on my Friends of the Library sale shelf. I'm not a scholar of the romatic poets or early 19th century England, but I really got caught up in this very readable book. At 32, Mary Lamb suddenly killed her mother with a carving knife as she was setting the table. What happens to her afterwards as she lives her life with her literary brother, Charles Lamb, is quite remarkable. For those interested in women's stories, mental illness treatment, societal attitudes towards criminality and "lunacy," this is a gem of a book. Reading "Mad Mary Lamb" has prompted my desire to seek out more tomes on this era in history and literature.
