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Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London

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When criminals are touched with madness, we try to figure out ways of keeping them from being punished unfairly. No one would think it right to punish a child, for instance, for something the child could not conceive as wrong, and it should be the same for criminals who lack such judgement. There have been many laws concerning such matters, starting with the famous McNaughton rule, formed in England in 1843, which ruled that one could not be found guilty if there was no capacity to know an action was against the law. It is surprising that society may have been dealing with insane criminals with more sensibility and sensitivity before McNaughton than after. That is one of the lessons in _Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London_ (Norton) by Susan Tyler Hitchcock. Mary Lamb probably had a bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder, starting around 1796, and it had to be treated intermittently for the rest of her life. This did not preclude her producing, with her brother, the classic _Tales from Shakespeare_. Hitchcock has brought light to this forgotten instance of madness, and examined Mary Lamb's case from literary, social, legal, and psychiatric sides, to tell a remarkable story of madness and redemption.

On 22 September 1796, Mary Lamb, 31 years old, was at her parents' home above a wig shop in London, when she took her knife and stabbed her mother in the chest, killing her, and she threw a fork that cut her father's forehead. The gruesome crime is at the very start of Hitchcock's book, and it made a sensation at the time. She was not tried for murder, and she was not put into prison. She was put under the care of her younger brother Charles, a renowned essayist, and remained in Charles's care for the rest of his life. Many of their years together were spent in fruitful literary collaboration between brother and sister. Mary was lucky; Charles was a clerk, not well off, but he was able to get her into private asylums rather than the public ones like Bedlam. Once Mary had emerged from her initial confinement, she and Charles set up house together, and were to do so for life. Neither married. They held in common close friends, many of whom had literary connections. They held salons, at which might be found such lights as Samuel Coleridge, William Hazlitt, Mary Wollstonecraft, or William Wordsworth.

Originally, Mary helped Charles merely as a copyist, making manuscripts of his essays or plays to be delivered to others. But gradually, she began writing on her own, not just copying, but making her own poems and essays. Through the book, her writing grows in competence along with her confidence in herself, first stilted and halting letters and then poems. Her printed work was often written in tandem with Charles, and it is difficult to tease who wrote what in their joint productions. In the most famous of them, _Tales from Shakespeare_, she gave the bulk of the stories, according to Charles, but his name, not hers, was on the title page. Hitchcock gives an excellent summary of how the Lambs changed the plays into stories, often difficult changes that were accomplished with such success that the book has remained in print ever since, and is still a useful guide to each play. She wrote other books for children, innovative for their time. For a woman and a mental patient she achieved a great deal in the literary world to which she and her brother were devoted. Hitchcock's book is a welcome reminder that she is not just a footnote to her brother's life.

1. The subject of this book is great!
2. The writing style is a bit wobbly at times.
3. The author jumps around and discusses way too many famous literary figures who have little or nothing to do with Mary Lamb's personal triumphs and failures.
4. Very little is actually told about Mary Lamb, who is supposed to be the featured character of this story!
5. The author inserts a lot of modernistic idealogy that would have been unknown to English men and women in 1795.
6. Gives a quick summary of a very complex woman.
7. Gives an even quicker summary of a very changing, difficult, and dramatic period of English history.

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. Yet her life after the death of her mother and interment in the mental hospital was far more than the dreary spinsterhood that would have been her fare had she not committed the crime. Hitchcock's attention to 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. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

"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.

This is the story of the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb, a brother and sister who heretofore I knew primarily as the authors of a series of children's stories adapted from Shakespeare.

The full history of the Lamb siblings is much more complicated. Mary was a repressed and overworked daughter who suffered from some unidentified mental illness which, one day without warning, caused her to murder her mother. After spending several months in a madhouse, she was placed under the guardianship of her younger brother Charles, who looked after her the rest of his life through numerous committals to various institutions and several moves to different homes in London and its environs. Together and separately the Lamb siblings were responsible for many essays, stories, and other publications which established them as leading literary lights.

Besides this tale of fraternal devotion, this book also provides a good depiction of life in London in the late 18th and early 19th centuries among the Lambs' literary milieu.

I finally finished this book! It took me weeks. I liked it enough to keep slogging on, but I put it down more readily than I picked it up. Interesting subject matter(s). Sorry I didn't like it better!

Mad Mary Lamb provides an interesting look at various aspects of British society in late-Georgian London, as well as providing the story of Mary and Charles Lamb, two writers, brother and sister, who were as devoted to each other throughout their adult lives as any two married people. The book is really about both brother and sister, discussing their lives, their relationship and their friends. Both struggled with mental illness. Charles though was much less profoundly affected by it than Mary, whose life eventually became overwhelmed by increasingly frequent psychotic episodes. Mary was 10 years older, and in the grip of her first spasm of mental illness murdered her abusive mother with a kitchen knife. Her work is discussed in brief. In truth it can't be said to be memorable, even though their "Tales from Shakespeare" for children has been in print in many languages for almost 200 years. By avoiding a more substantial discussion of their work the author does manage to avoid interfering with her attempt at hagiography. In their version of "The Merchant of Venice", devoid of its poetic context and careful parsing the play becomes simply a crude anti-semitic story (easily accessible full text online) -- with an audience of children. In perhaps Charles' most well-known work, Essays of Elia, the essay "Imperfect Sympathies" (also available online) displays his smarmy and shameless dislike of Scots, Jews and Blacks hiding behind a veneer of discriminating taste and judiciousness.

This is an example of the Nineteenth Century literary imagination coupled with the new style of writing 'history' which doesn't have to stick with the facts but can create a few for entertainment effects. Mrs. Hitchcock used letters to show the human Mary Lamb. She suffered a madness similar to Mary Lincoln. Only through the intervention on the part of her brother who helped her to write TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE, she was not confined to a mental institution for the long years of her life. It was the literary redemption and the 'power of the written word' which save her sanity and her life.

It is the compelling story of the English Lizzie Borden. If her brother had not been the famous Charles Lamb, we would never have known about this tragic life and death and the circumstances which compelled her to kill her own mother with a big knife in 1796. Lizzie, on the other hand, used an ax to chop her father to death because of a supposed indiscretion (his or hers?) and a nasty step-mother. Perhaps he had it coming, to sequester an old-maid daughter to watch him faun over and fondle that woman in her mother's house.

You don't have to be in the throes of a mental illness to kill someone. There is a popular song called 'Killing Me Softly With His Song.' There are numerous incidences in ballads and folk tales about murders due to unrequited love and perceived slights. Even extensive and unwarranted criticism can induce the killing instinct of self-preservation.

I'm not saying that any of these caused her to kill her mother. She alone knew the deep reason for such drastic actions. Sometimes, people are just driven too far and their minds 'snap.' It is a type of temporary madness due to circumstances; it is a compulsion beyond their control. When the young boys in Chicago killed a neighbor boy as explained in the book COMPULSION and a more recent killing of a partly-autistic boy by two neighbor boys happened, no one really knows what makes children kill children. Kids are mean until they are taught by the adults in their families that you cannot always act on your wants and desires of the moment.

Mary would have surely lost her mind except for the loving care of her brother and his literary friends. Charles died in 1835 at the age of sixty, and she lived to be past eighty. They'd lived a sheltered life prior to a few years before the murder. The move may have brought on Mary's inclinations to hit back.

Photographs of the luminaries of that time and some drawings enhance the narrative. It is interesting, but not unusual.