Lamb, Charles

English essayist and critic. He collaborated with his sister Mary Lamb (1764–1847) on Tales from Shakespeare (1807), and his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare, with Notes (1808) revealed him as a penetrating critic and helped to revive interest in Elizabethan plays. As ‘Elia’ he contributed essays to the London Magazine from 1820 (collected 1823 and 1833).

Lamb's essays are still widely read and admired; they include ‘A Dissertation on Roast Pig’, ‘Mrs Battle's Opinions on Whist’, ‘Dream Children’, and ‘The Supernatural Man’.

He was born in the Temple, London, and was educated at Christ's Hospital. As a friend of Coleridge, some of his poems were included in the second edition of Poems on Various Subjects (1797). He was a clerk with the East India Company at India House 1792–1825, when he retired to Enfield. His sister Mary stabbed their mother to death in a fit of insanity in 1796, and Charles cared for her between her periodic returns to an asylum.