Book Description
1897. Volume One of Six. English essayist and poet, Charles Lamb (pen name Elia), studied at Christ's Hospital where he formed a lifelong friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. When he was twenty years old Lamb suffered a period of insanity. His sister, Mary Ann Lamb, had similar problems and in 1796 murdered her mother in a fit of madness. Mary was confined to an asylum but was eventually released into the care of her brother. Lamb became friends in London with a group of young writers who favored political reform including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. Among his most remembered works are his collection of Essays of Elia; the poem The Old Familiar Faces and the essay Dream Children. He also wrote Tales from Shakespeare in collaboration with his sister and The Adventures Of Ulysses were valuable retellings of classic works for children. Lamb's critical comments in Specimens of English Dramatic poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare are among the classics of English criticism. Contents: Lamb's Parentage, Schooldays and Youth; Insanity of Mary Lamb-Early Poetic Efforts; Rosamund Gray-John Woodvil; Mr. H.-Temple Lane-The Quarterly Review Attack; Lamb's Suppers; The London Magazine-Wainwright's Story; Visit to Paris-Elia's Letter to Southey-Islington; New Friends-Lamb's Emancipation-Enfield-Edmonton; Lamb's Wednesday Nights-His Companions-Last Glimpses; Lamb's Friends and Companions; Mary Lamb; Lamb Fully Known-His Character; and Correspondence with Coleridge. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. ... Read more

Book Description
The English poet Charles Lamb (1775-1834) stimulates reactions that often lie outside the boundaries of literary criticism, reactions that are often motivated by ideological, cultural or political concerns. He poses particularly difficult, even unanswerable, questions that often provoke intemperate anger or great affection in readers. Historically, the first critical misunderstanding of Lamb is to see him as a radical; later he is canonized a domestic saint; in the 1930s he is a reactionary bourgeois. More recently, he is understood as a conscious artist; first, by New Critics as a transcendent optimist, then, in the post-structuralist version, as a tormented soul creating his artifice out of the limitations of human life. This study, a comprehensive history of reactions to Lamb, proposes that perhaps Lamb is a literary 'trickster' who delights in raising just those contradictions of modern life which those who attempt a systematic style of criticism would like to ignore. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Dr. Huizenga Will Have To Write a New Book
Since Dr. Huizenga wrote this scathing book against Cold Fusion, so much has happened in the field.Even the U.S. Navy revealed in the Spring, 2003 that they have been clandestinely researching Cold Fusion for a decade.Their conclusion?Cold Fusion is real and it warrants an official government funded research effort.Dr. Huizenga, well meaning or not, missed the boat on Cold Fusion.It's too bad he put his closed-minded scientific views in writing for the whole world to see.I wonder if he'll be writing a new book when Cold Fusion re-emerges into the scientific mainstream in coming years?Cold Fusion is being replicated all around the world, and the skeptics are just flat-earthers at this point.

Cold Fusion
This is the greatest book describing the scientific fiasco of the century. It is a great book describing the theory and showing experiments to try and duplicate this process of cold fusion. Great Book. ... Read more

Book Description
This book explores the development of Lamb's essays from their germinal origins in experience, conversation and readingthrough their first expressions in talk, letters, and minor worksto their final form. ... Read more

Book Description
Celebrated prose retellings of Shakespeare’s plays

Charles and Mary Lamb have delighted generations of adults as well as children with their famed prose renderings of Shakespeare’s originals. Bringing the plays to life in a form that encourages readers to enjoy and explore, Tales from Shakespeare provides an entertaining and informative introduction to the great works while retaining much of Shakespeare’s lyricism, phrasing, and rhythm. It is a captivating work of Romantic storytelling as well as the original literary homage to the Bard. ... Read more

Book Description
In 1796 when Mary Lamb, in a sudden attack of violent frenzy, killed her mother, her brother Charles pledged himself to be responsible for her care, thus sparing her from threatened incarceration in Bedlam. For the next thirty odd years they lived, and wrote, together. Informed by feminist and psychoanalytic literary theory, this book provides an entirely new perspective on the lives and writings of Charles and Mary Lamb. It argues that the Lambs's ideological inheritance as the children of servants, their work experience as clerk and needlewoman respectively, and the role that madness and matricide played in both their lives, resulted in writings which were at variance with the spirit of their age. In particular, the intensity of their sibling bond is seen, in Charles Lamb's case, as resulting in texts stylistically and thematically opposed to the masculinist stance currently considered characteristic of Romantic writers. ... Read more

Book Description
No better introduction to William Shakespeare's dramatic masterpieces exists than the delightful prose adaptations of Charles and Mary Lamb, first published in 1807. The two selected 20 of Shakespeare's best-known plays and set out both to make them accessible to children and to pay enthusiastic homage to the original works. Together the Lambs distilled the powerful themes and unforgettable characterizations of Shakespeare's plays into elegant narratives--classic tales in their own right. Charles took responsibility for such powerful tragedies as Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear, while Mary worked on the comedies: brilliant fantasies like A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, and thought-provoking plays like Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, and The Merchant of Venice. As the authors point out in their introduction, their versions of the tragedies tend to rely on the language of the original plays, while the comedies are more freely adapted. But all of the Lambs' stories--with their clear, supple, and rhythmic prose--reward any reader, whether encountering Shakespeare for the first time or revisiting his work. This edition of Tales from Shakespeare is reproduced from one first published in 1909 and features 12 full-color paintings and many drawings by the renowned illustrator Arthur Rackham.Download Description
Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales retell Shakespeare's 37 plays in prose. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (17)

Sweet short stories
Obviously, if you're an older reader well accustomed to the world of Shakespeare, this is NOT the book for you. These are "children" versions of Shakespeare plays. They're short, sweet, and a little simple, obviously. While they still have the same mature content as the plays, it feels more toned down.

You've got it all, really. Whatever Shakespeare play you love, you'll find it here, from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to "Macbeth" and through "Hamlet". The stories are obviously the same, but the style is different. They feel a little like fairy tales, which is kind of the point. Children's stories, but of some of the greatest classics of all time.

These stories are fun to read, but don't think they're superb literature. They are a good way to spend an afternoon, but for older readers, the plays are still the way to go. This is better for older children and preteens who aren't quite ready to read Shakespeare himself, but can understand the stories themselves. I recommend it, but don't expect something incredible.

A great work of literature in it's own right
In this volume Charles and Mary Lamb turned 20 of Shakespeare's best loved plays into narratives for children , and it is a work of art in itself.
Written in 1807 , the stories are still easily readable and enjoyable 200 years later.
It is the ideal companion for one who finds Shakespeare hard to follow in the cold print of the play scripts but would like an easy and gentle introduction to his plays.
These stories are today read not only because they are an introduction to Shakespeare but they are the works of Charles Lamb and his sister.
The easy flow of Tales , the unity of style throughout , narrative sliding naturally into dialogue and dialogue into narrative , shows what talented authors the Lambs where.
Sub-plots and subsidiary inicidents and characters which give richness and variety to the plays on stage can confuse and mar the narratvies.

Thus they are often left out in the narratvies , leading a Shakespeare afficionado to perhaps be alarmed that the antics of Malvolio and the wit and pranks of Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek are left out of the Lamb narrative of Twelfth Night.
But if they where included they would have confused an already complicated story , one of mistaken indentity and familiar absurdity.

Charles Lamb gives his own ideas as to the sanity or lack thereof of Hamlet and often at the end of the comedies Mary Lamb writes of the characters living happily ever after , giving a longer time frame to the narratives than exisited in the plays.
This fresh infusion of the Lamb's own ideas and wisdom , made this a greater work than had they been mere critiques or precis of the plays themselves.

Great intro for kids
When I first began homeschooling my children I came across this book. Since we were to soon see a high school production of Midsummer's Night Dream I read the Lamb version aloud to them before seeing the performance. The results were amazing.My children had no previous exposure to Shakespeare. The Lamb's ability to retain some of Shakespeare's original language greatly enhanced their comprehension. They loved the story and we able to follow the play with ease, laughing and clearly enjoying themselves much to the frustration of some nearby adults who were completely lost.This book helped begin their love affair with Sir William.I am of the opinion reading a well summarized version of his plays and then watching a well done performance will make any child appreciate the genius that is Shakespeare's work.

A Treasure Book
If you want to learn as a novice the tales of Shakespeare, then this is the book to read. A children's novel of his famous plays. Now to the English Shakespearean scholar this would seem like Shakespeare for dummies, but I would only partially agree. This is a great book to be introduced and gives a general framework before reading him. Even after reading this, its not an easy task trying to read Elizabethan English, which even the experts argue on some of the terms and expressions used. And so, this book lets you understand and I find its written rather well in Charles and Mary Lambs authorship.

After reading this book, which also make good for second, third and fourth readings, I found it much easier to absorb a recent bio on Shakespeare which was very enlightening, Will of the World by Stephen Greenblatt and also other books which attempt explanatory meanings of Elizabethan English to his plays and sonnets. Now you know what the plays are about and go from there. This is a great book, I treasure it.

Read it as a child and now use it as a professor
I remember my father giving me this book when I was young.He was a junior high school english teacher and used this book in class.Together we read the stories and I loved them.Now I am a college professor and use the book in class myself. While some of the summaries are "dated," they are still useful in communicating the basic action of the play to students and the very fact that they are "dated" allows the book to serve as an illustration of how interpretations of Shakespeare's plays have changed since the Lambs' time.

I recommend this book heartily. ... Read more