Mary Lamb

I am indebted to Mrs. Henry Watson, a granddaughter of Mr. Gillman, for one or two interesting reminiscences, and for a hitherto unpublished ＂notelet＂ by Lamb, together with an omitted paragraph from a published letter, which confirms what other letters also show, -that the temporary estrangement between Lamb and Coleridge was mainly due to the influence of the morbid condition of mind of their common friend, Charles Lloyd. My thanks are also due to Mr. Potts for some bibliographic details respecting the various editions of the Tales from Shakespeare. Reprinted here, for the first time, is a little essay on Needle-work (regarded from an industrial, not an ＂art＂ point of view), by Mary Lamb, unearthed from an obscure and long-deceased periodical-The British Lady’s Magazine-for which I have to thank Mr. Edward Solly, F.R.S. The reader will find, also, the only letter that has been preserved from Coleridge to Lamb, who destroyed all the rest in a moment of depression. This letter is given, without exact date or name of the person to whom it was addressed, in Gillman’s unfinished Life of Coleridge, as having been written ＂to a friend in great anguish of mind on the sudden death of his mother,＂ and has, I believe, never before been identified. But the internal evidence that it was to Lamb is decisive.