Mad Mary Lamb [Hardcover]

When criminals are touched with madness, we try to figure out ways of keeping them from being punished unfairly. No one would think it right to punish a child, for instance, for something the child could not conceive as wrong, and it should be the same for criminals who lack such judgement. There have been many laws concerning such matters, starting with the famous McNaughton rule, formed in England in 1843, which ruled that one could not be found guilty if there was no capacity to know an action was against the law. It is surprising that society may have been dealing with insane criminals with more sensibility and sensitivity before McNaughton than after. That is one of the lessons in _Mad Mary Lamb: Lunacy and Murder in Literary London_ (Norton) by Susan Tyler Hitchcock. Mary Lamb probably had a bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder, starting around 1796, and it had to be treated intermittently for the rest of her life. This did not preclude her producing, with her brother, the classic _Tales from Shakespeare_. Hitchcock has brought light to this forgotten instance of madness, and examined Mary Lamb's case from literary, social, legal, and psychiatric sides, to tell a remarkable story of madness and redemption.

On 22 September 1796, Mary Lamb, 31 years old, was at her parents' home above a wig shop in London, when she took her knife and stabbed her mother in the chest, killing her, and she threw a fork that cut her father's forehead. The gruesome crime is at the very start of Hitchcock's book, and it made a sensation at the time. She was not tried for murder, and she was not put into prison. She was put under the care of her younger brother Charles, a renowned essayist, and remained in Charles's care for the rest of his life. Many of their years together were spent in fruitful literary collaboration between brother and sister. Mary was lucky; Charles was a clerk, not well off, but he was able to get her into private asylums rather than the public ones like Bedlam. Once Mary had emerged from her initial confinement, she and Charles set up house together, and were to do so for life. Neither married. They held in common close friends, many of whom had literary connections. They held salons, at which might be found such lights as Samuel Coleridge, William Hazlitt, Mary Wollstonecraft, or William Wordsworth.

Originally, Mary helped Charles merely as a copyist, making manuscripts of his essays or plays to be delivered to others. But gradually, she began writing on her own, not just copying, but making her own poems and essays. Through the book, her writing grows in competence along with her confidence in herself, first stilted and halting letters and then poems. Her printed work was often written in tandem with Charles, and it is difficult to tease who wrote what in their joint productions. In the most famous of them, _Tales from Shakespeare_, she gave the bulk of the stories, according to Charles, but his name, not hers, was on the title page. Hitchcock gives an excellent summary of how the Lambs changed the plays into stories, often difficult changes that were accomplished with such success that the book has remained in print ever since, and is still a useful guide to each play. She wrote other books for children, innovative for their time. For a woman and a mental patient she achieved a great deal in the literary world to which she and her brother were devoted. Hitchcock's book is a welcome reminder that she is not just a footnote to her brother's life.

1. The subject of this book is great!

2. The writing style is a bit wobbly at times.

3. The author jumps around and discusses way too many famous literary figures who have little or nothing to do with Mary Lamb's personal triumphs and failures.

4. Very little is actually told about Mary Lamb, who is supposed to be the featured character of this story!

5. The author inserts a lot of modernistic idealogy that would have been unknown to English men and women in 1795.

6. Gives a quick summary of a very complex woman.

7. Gives an even quicker summary of a very changing, difficult, and dramatic period of English history.

In 1796 Mary Lamb thrust a knife into her mother's chest, in that instant breaking free of the drudgery that consumed her days, but at what cost? Sent to Fisher House, a private, quasi-affordable madhouse in Islington, Mary underwent the usual brutal and humiliating treatments dictated by science at the time, similar to those King George III was subjected to ten years before. Whether the madhouse experience damaged her creatively is still a source of discussion, but certainly she fell into line, causing no further disturbance, eventually moving into rooms of her own with the help of her younger brother, Charles Lamb. Eventually Charles and Mary Lamb devised a manner of living, what he called "double-singleness", Mary accepted into her brother's literary circle and appreciated for her sharp intelligence and intellectual curiosity. Together they co-authored three books, Tales from Shakespear (1807), Mrs. Leicester's School (1809) and Poetry for Children (1809).

Mad Mary Lamb is an extensively researched, impressive reconstruction of Mary's life on the fringes of literary society, freed by the act that sundered her from family obligations beyond the society of her brother. London was teeming with literary genius, the country infused with political uncertainty and a rapidly changing world where ideas were exchanged in lively debate in salons all over the city. Most women were hidden behind society's restraints, great literary achievements solely the purview of the male gender. While Charles moved in and out of his own creative forays, Mary nurtured seeds of her own writing. Her contribution to Tales of Shakespear was certainly equal to her brother's, a challenging task in any case. Mary's ability to empathize enabled her to step inside the identities of others: "It was her deep and sympathetic feeling, coupled with her intellect, that brought her admiration from men of such high standards as Coleridge."

What Mad Mary Lamb points out most succinctly is the blossoming of her writing life after the tragic event of the murder. Her creativity stifled by a spinster's role in society that relegated her to little more than a domestic servant, albeit to family, the murder offered Mary a unique opportunity she might otherwise not have known. Never audacious or brave enough to tackle the more dangerous boundaries, Mary Lamb transgressed just enough to participate in a lively literary life, at the side of her prolific brother, Charles Lamb, who was also an accomplished essayist. Yet her life after the death of her mother and interment in the mental hospital was far more than the dreary spinsterhood that would have been her fare had she not committed the crime. Hitchcock's attention to detail is extraordinary and extensive, with copious notes, bibliography and index, Mary Lamb brought to life on these pages, her crime, tentative reach toward life and the fulfilling world of writing afforded by a violent transgression against society's most basic tenant. Luan Gaines/ 2006.

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