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Revolution and Romanticism
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A facsimile reprint in the Revolution & Romanticism series chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth ISBN 1 85477 182 5 174 x 110 mm 200 pages, frontis
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MARY AND CHARLES LAMB Mrs Leicester's School 1809 The Godwin publishing business in Skinner Street produced three books in whole or in part by Mary Lamb. Mrs Leicester’s School and Tales from Shakespeare were created jointly with her brother; an anthology, Poetry for Children, was edited by Mary alone. A main intention of Mrs Leicester’s School was to counter the patronising morality of children’s writers such as Barbauld and Trimmer; and its structure - new girls at the school introduce themselves by telling their own sharply contrasting life stories - draws the reader into sharing the child’s perspective. Mary wrote seven of the stories, Charles three. She told Crabb Robinson of the pain of writing them but he praised them as ‘delightfully simple and exquisitely told’, ‘full of deep feeling, and great truth of imagination’. £27.50 $48 The first thing I can remember was my father teaching me the alphabet from the letters on a tombstone that stood at the head of my mother’s grave. I used to tap at my father’s study door; I think I now hear him say, ‘Who is there? What do you want, little girl?’ ‘Go and see mamma. Go and learn pretty letters.’ Many times in the day would my father lay aside his books and papers to lead me to this spot, and make me point to the letters, and then set me to spell syllables and words: in this manner, the epitaph on my mother’s tomb being my primer and my spelling-book, I learned to read. |
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