Mary Lamb

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ML is still known primarily as the sister of the essayist Charles Lamb , and as the central character in a painful and sensational story. She was, however, the lead author in her three collaborations with Charles (Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, 1807, Mrs Leicester's School, 1808, and a book of verses for children) and sole author of a strongly feminist essay.
Image of the head of Mary Lamb, 1764 - 1847, from a portrait of her with her brother Charles, by Francis Stephen Cary, 1834. She looks straight at the viewer; her face and some visible black hair are encircled by a white ruffled cap tied with a broad, dark ribbon, and she wears a black cloak.

Milestones

3 December 1764

Mary Lamb was born in the Temple, London, the middle one and the only girl among the three surviving children in her family.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Burton, Sarah. A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb. Viking.
13

By May 1807

Mary Jane Godwin (whom Charles and Mary Lamb disliked and called privately Bad Baby) published their prose Tales from Shakespear : Designed for the Use of Young Persons, with Charles's name only, though Mary had written two-thirds of it.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
3rd ser. 11 (1807): 97-99
Burton, Sarah. A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb. Viking.
188, 226

20 May 1847

Mary Lamb died at 41 Alpha Road, St John's Wood, aged eighty-three.
Sarah Burton gives this address as number 41, while Jane Aaron in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography gives number 40.
Burton, Sarah. A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb. Viking.
380
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

The pseudonym, not an obvious choice among classical womens' names, probably comes from a character in Mary Hays 's Letters and Essays, Moral and Miscellaneous, published by 1793.
Aaron, Jane. A Double Singleness. Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press.
52n2

Birth and Family

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