Born in The Temple, London, 1775, died in 1834; his father
the clerk of a bencher in the Inner Temple; entered Christ
Hospital in 1782, where he met Coleridge and remained seven
years; became a clerk in the South Sea House in 1789, and in
the India House in 1792; his sister, Mary Lamb, in a fit of
temporary insanity, killed their mother in 1796, Charles
becoming her guardian for the remainder of her life; began
to publish verse in 1796; published "Rosamond Gray" in 1798,
a two-act farce produced at Drury Lane in 1805, "Tales from
Shakespeare," in which his sister shared the labor with him,
in 1807; and essays in various magazines, first collected in
1823 as the "Essays of Elia"; went abroad with his sister in
1822; retired from the India House with a pension of £441 in
1825; published the "Last Essays of Elia" in 1833.
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