David Jays
Miss Lamb Is From Home
The Devil Kissed Her: The Story of Mary Lamb
By Kathy Watson
Bloomsbury 243pp £16.99
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
Twitter Feed
How to ruin a film - a short guide by @TWHodgkinson:
Thomas W Hodgkinson - There Was No Sorcerer
Thomas W Hodgkinson: There Was No Sorcerer - Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey
literaryreview.co.uk
How to ruin a film - a short guide by @TWHodgkinson:
Thomas W Hodgkinson - There Was No Sorcerer
Thomas W Hodgkinson: There Was No Sorcerer - Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey
literaryreview.co.uk
Give the gift that lasts all year with a subscription to Literary Review. Save up to 35% on the cover price when you visit us at https://literaryreview.co.uk/subscribe and enter the code 'XMAS24'