David Jays
Miss Lamb Is From Home
The Devil Kissed Her: The Story of Mary Lamb
By Kathy Watson
Bloomsbury 243pp £16.99 order from our bookshop
IT IS DIFFICULT not to begin with the murder. In 1796 in Holborn, London, a seamstress at the end of her tether snapped and stabbed her incapacitated mother to death with a carving life, while her senile father wept beside her. Her younger brother was searching for a doctor when the incident occurred. Remarkably, the killer was returned to her brother's care, and Mary and Charles Lamb remained together until the latter died in 1834. The Lambs have since bobbed through fashions in criticism and biography. Their essays and stories are intriguing cultural indicators, and their sensational past attracts our trauma-hugging present. Kathy Watson's strongly empathetic biography is the second in twelve months, while the London-loving siblings are central to Peter Ackroyd's latest novel about the capital.
Mary imagined that her mother forgave her for the murder, and Watson argues that, paradoxically, the crime was 'the best thing that could have happened. With that case knife, she had cut the ties that bound her.' You may resist this interpretation - Mary entered literary London and fostered a
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger
'The eight years he has spent in solitary confinement have had a devastating impact on his mental health ... human rights organisations believe his detention is punishment for his critical views.'
@lucyjpop on the Egyptian activist and poet Ahmed Douma.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/ahmed-douma
'We nipped down Mount Pleasant ... me marvelling at London all over again because the back of a Vespa gives you the everyday world like nothing else can.'
Ali Smith writes this month's diary.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/temple-of-vespa