SOURCE: Dobson, Meaghan H. “(Re)considering Mary Lamb: Imagination and Memory in Mrs. Leicester's School.” Charles Lamb Bulletin 93 (January 1996): 12-21.

In the following essay, Dobson separates the different techniques used by Mary and Charles Lamb to criticize patriarchal authority, focusing on the contributions each made to Mrs. Leicester's School.

In the rare critical essay which examines Mary Lamb's writing, the critic often draws Mary back in under her brother Charles' shadow, coming to a conclusion similar to Pamela Woof's on Mary and on Dorothy Wordsworth: ‘Both Mary and Dorothy survived their brothers; they valued each other as friends, the world now properly values them as writers. It is perhaps true to say that these things came about because they were their brothers' sisters’.¹ And criticism of Charles and Mary Lamb's collaborative writing often regards Mary as the entertaining but clearly lesser half of the pair, as when Joseph...