Charles Lamb (1775-1834) and his elder sister Mary Lamb (1764-1847) were the children of a confidential clerk to one of the lawyers in the Inner Temple in London. Charles grew up to join the charitable school of Christ’s Hospital on a scholarship, where he met Coleridge as a senior student and a lifelong friendship was struck. However, Charles had to start work rather too early. He began as a clerk to a city merchant in 1789. In 1791 he joined the South Sea House, from where he moved in to East India Company and continued there for long thirty-three years as a clerk, “a prisoner to the desk...almost grown to wood,” as he described himself. There was a streak of insanity in the family, and though Charles had only one brief stint in a mental hospital in 1795, all his life he lived under the shadow of a fear. Mary’s case was more serious; under a spell of madness she had stabbed both her parents and had to stay one year in a lunatic asylum before her brother took charge of her, which he did not relinquish till his death. Mary too appreciated the sympathy and kindness of the younger brother who remained a bachelor for her sake. Mary too did not marry.
Charles was a warm hearted, amiable, and much loved person, whose homes—the Lambs had to change their residence continually because of the gossip that chased them regarding Mary’s past—were the meeting places for Coleridge, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, Southey and other literary figures of the time.