Charles Lamb's modest family origins included a father who was a servant and a mother who was the daughter of a female domestic. Though his parents bore seven children, only Charles, his older sister Mary, and the oldest boy John survived infancy. Charles was educated at Christ's Hospital, joining the East India Company soon after he left the school. During 1795 he suffered a mental breakdown and was confined for six weeks. In 1796, Mary also suffered a breakdown, stabbing and killing their mother. Mary, too, was confined for insanity and released only on condition that Charles agree to care for her, a responsibility he held to despite the trials of returning her to an asylum periodically for treatment. Charles Lamb began publishing literary work first with poems, then his novel Rosamund Gray in 1798, followed by some unsuccessful farces, profuse literary journalism, and successful children's literature, most notably his well-loved collaboration with Mary, Tales from Shakespear (1807). His compilation Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare (1808) was admired. Lamb is best remembered for his series of essays in the London Magazine under the pseudonym “Elia.” He formed close friendships with many of the literary notables of the period, especially Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and William Godwin.