Mary Lamb

Mary Anne Lamb (3 December 1764 – 20 May 1847) was an English writer. She is best known for the collaboration with her brother Charles on the collection Tales from Shakespeare (1807). Mary suffered from mental illness, and in 1796, aged 31, she stabbed her mother to death during a mental breakdown. She was confined to mental facilities for most of her remaining life. She and Charles presided over a literary circle in London that included the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, among others.

Mary Lamb was born in London on 3 December 1764, the third of seven children of John and Elizabeth Lamb. Her parents worked for Samuel Salt, a barrister in London, and the family lived above Salt in his home at 2 Crown Office Row in the Inner Temple. Only two of Mary's siblings survived: her older brother John Jr. and her younger brother Charles. Mary learned about literature and writers from her father's stories of the times he had seen Samuel Johnson, who lived nearby, and his visitors. Mary remembered seeing, at the age of five, the writer Oliver Goldsmith in the street, and she also witnessed David Garrick's acting. Her father may have taken her with him on his trips to the Pope's Head book shop nearby.

Samuel Salt died in 1792, and the Lambs had to move out of their lodgings soon afterwards (see tied accommodation). John Lamb continued to work in his old position in the Great Hall of the Inner Temple, where he had waited on Salt, but his wages were not sufficient to keep the lodgings that had been provided without cost by Salt. Samuel Salt left £600 to the Lambs, along with small annuities. They moved to a home in Little Queen Street, near High Holborn. Around this time, John Lamb had a stroke, losing most of the use of his left hand. John was allowed to continue receiving his salary while another man stood in for him in the Inner Temple, performing his duties. This arrangement lasted until John's death in 1799.