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Three unpublished songs by Charles Lamb for Mary Shelley.

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From: Wordsworth Circle
Date: 20020622
Author:Bennett, Betty T.

Inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's tears on hearing a sad song, Charles Lamb composed three songs for her and sent them to his muse the next day with the injunction that she not "be offended." (1) Though Lamb did not date the songs, the watermark, J GREEN & SON / 1833 on the songs' bifolium reveals that they could not have been written before 1833, the year before Lamb's death on 27 December 1834. (2)

Charles and Mary Lamb first met the young Mary Shelley when they became friends with her father, William Godwin, in 1800 (Marrs, 1, 27n, 185-6). Beyond family friendship, ...

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