Charles Lamb (1775–1834): Essayist, best known for Essays of Elia (1823). Lamb was the son of John Lamb (c. 1725–1779), a lawyer’s clerk, and grew up in the Inner Temple in central London. Charles Lamb was educated at Christ’s Hospital 1782–1789, where he became a close friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and began work as a clerk in the Accountant’s Office of the East India Company in 1792. Much of Lamb’s life was dominated by the need to care for his older sister, Mary Lamb, who stabbed their mother to death in 1796 and was subject to bouts of insanity. However, their home became the centre of a literary salon and Lamb was a well-known figure in London literary society. While he published poetry and plays, it was as an essayist that he became increasingly well-known from 1811 onwards. Lamb and Southey were introduced by Coleridge in 1795. Their relationship started to blossom in 1797, when Lamb — accompanied by Charles Lloyd — paid Southey an unexpected visit. Southey and Lamb shared an interest in Francis Quarles (1592–1644; DNB). After Southey moved to Keswick they saw much less of each other. They quarrelled briefly — and publicly — in 1823, when Southey criticised Lamb’s remarks on religion in Essays of Elia, but the two men were soon reconciled when they met in London later that year. Southey retained his affection for Lamb and regard for his work throughout his life. Although they corresponded, almost all of Southey’s letters to Lamb have not survived.