Lam, Charles

Lam was born into a family of a London clerk . During his studies, he made friends with the romantics Lee Hunt and Coleridge , who became his close friends for life. He hoped to become a priest, but was forced to leave this thought because of stuttering. From 1792 to 1825 He served as an official in the Indian Office.

In 1796, an event took place that turned Lam's life around - his beloved sister Mary, in a fit of insanity, stabbed their mother with a kitchen knife. Since then, Charles lived with his mentally ill sister, caring for her in moments of exacerbation of the disease and helping to work on the prosaic retelling of Shakespeare's plays, which gained wide popularity. In 1808, they published a revised version of the Odyssey for schoolchildren.

Lam appeared in a more serious literary field in 1798 with The Tale of Rosamund Gray, which was followed in 1802 by the tragedy in the poems John Woodville. These works did not bring him even a fraction of the success that stood out as part of the short poem "Old Familiar Faces" (1789). In addition, the elegy “On the death of a newborn” (1828) is often included in poetic anthologies.

With age, Lam began to act as a literary critic, which, in fact, he did not really like. But this was the only way to earn a living and maintenance of a sister. In Lee Hunt's magazine, he published articles on Shakespeare and Hogarth . Many of his journal reviews suffered from the intervention of zealous editors, so the letters give the most complete picture of his literary tastes and preferences. In one or two carelessly abandoned phrases, often in the margins, Lam gave accurate assessments of the artistic phenomena of his time. The British Encyclopedia calls him one of the classics of the English epistolary genre ^[4] .

The greatest glory to Lam brought " Essays of Elya ", which he published in his own edition of London Magazine since 1820. The first collection of essays went out of print in 1823, the second - 10 years later. In his essays, or essays, the writer hides behind the mask of Elia - a mannered eccentric immersed in the memories of the events of 30 years ago. Themes of the essays are diverse: theater, tender feelings, politics. In style, they are closest to the works of Lawrence Stern , which Lam never ceased to admire.

In the last years of his life, Lam drank a lot. After falling from the stairs, he developed an erysipelas , from which he died. Mary Lam survived her brother for 12 years and is buried beside him in Edmonton near London.

• Blank Verse ( 1798 , poems)
• John Woodvil ( 1802 , drama in verse)
• Tales from Shakespeare ( 1807 )
• The Adventures of Ulysses ( 1808 )
• Specimens of English Dramatic poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare ( 1808 )
• On the Tragedies of Shakespeare ( 1811 )
• Witches and Other Night Fears ( 1821 )
• Essays of Elia ( 1823 )
• The Last Essays of Elia ( 1833 )

• Charles Lam. Essays on Elia / USSR Academy of Sciences ; The publication was prepared by K. A. Afanasyev , A. S. Bobovich , N. Ya. Dyakonov , I. A. Likhachev (†), N. Ya. Rykova ; Repl. ed. N. Y. Dyakonov; Artist M.I. Razulevich . - L .: Nauka , 1979. - 264, [10] p. - ( Literary monuments ). - 100,000 copies.
• Lam’s poems were translated into Russian by M. Mikhailov and A. Pleshcheev .

• I can not stand people who run towards time
• All news, with the exception of bread prices, is meaningless and inappropriate

• Vengerova Z. A. Lamb, Charles // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• British Encyclopedia article
• Lukov Vl. A. Lam Charles (Neopr.) . Electronic Encyclopedia "Shakespeare's World" (2010). Date of treatment April 9, 2015. Archived on April 9, 2015.