"'One of the most conspicuous land-marks in the history of the romantic movement." This is how Charles and Mary Lamb's most famous work, 'Tales From Shakespeare', has been described.
First published in 1807, it has never been out of print. Considering their situation at the centre of the Romantic movement (their close friends included William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Hazlitt and Mary Shelley) comparatively little attention has been paid to this extraordinary brother-sister partnership.
'A Double Life' penetrates to the heart of early nineteenth-century London, meeting its eccentrics and misfits as well as its literary giants. It also visits the city's darker corners, where poverty stalks rented rooms and madhouses conceal corruption and abuse.
At the centre of the narrative stand the inseparable brother and sister, highly esteemed for their literary talents and loved for their charm and generosity, yet living under the constant shadow of insanity.
