THE DEVIL KISSED HER. The Story of Mary Lamb.

Hardback, 1st edition. Murderess, madwoman, and co-author with her brother Charles of the children's classic 'Tales from Shakespeare'. On September 22, 1796 Mary Lamb stabbed her mother to death with the family carving knife. Amazingly this overstretched carer of a senile father and paralysed mother was neither imprisoned nor punished, but released into the care of her younger brother Charles. Brother and sister were to share their home, friends and work for nearly 40yrs. They wrote together, ran a literary agency, and had a salon celebrated for its 'remarkable freedom from bores' and frequented by literary lions such as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Hazlitt and Godwin. However, the Lambs' popularity existed in the shadow of Mary's recurring bouts of illness. A long time before manic depression was diagnosed, Mary's collapses took her to mental hospital for several months of the year. Together Mary and her devoted brother Charles got her periodic incarceration, and even her need for a straightjacket, down to a fine art. The author's aim has been to find the real Mary Lamb amidst all the contradictions: to reconcile the modest, motherly lady who wrote 'Tales from Shakespeare' with the murderess; the 'lunatic' with the admired hostess whom Hazlitt declared 'the only thoroughly reasonable woman' he had ever met. Illus. 245pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. F. in F. dw.