The Lambs of London

by Peter Ackroyd

A tour de force in the tradition of Hawksmoor and Chatterton , Peter Ackroyd’s new novel of deceit and betrayal is a witty reimagining of a great nineteenth-century Shakespeare forgery.

Charles and Mary Lamb, who will achieve lasting fame as the authors of Tales from Shakespeare for children, are still living at their parents’ home. Charles, an aspiring writer bored stiff by his job as a clerk at the East India Company, enjoys a drink or three too many each night at the local pub. His sister, Mary, is trapped in domesticity, caring for her ailing, dotty father and her maddening mother. The siblings’ enchantment with Shakespeare provides a much-needed escape, and they delight in reading and quoting the great bard. When William Ireland, an ambitious young antiquarian bookseller, comes into their lives claiming to possess a “lost” Shakespearean play, the Lambs can barely contain their excitement. As word of the amazing find spreads, scholars and actors alike beat a path to Ireland’s door, and soon all of London is eagerly anticipating opening night of a star-studded production of the play.

The perfect, lighthearted follow-up to Ackroyd’s magnificent biography of Shakespeare, The Lambs of London transforms the real-life literary hoax into an ingenious, intriguing drama that will keep readers guessing right to the end.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, London, British Literature, Shakespeare, 21st Century

213 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.

Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.

Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.

Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.

Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.

Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.

His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.

From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.

Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.

In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.

Reviews

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting, complex & super well written, "The Lambs of London" is yet another fully submersive foray into a previous age from Ackroyd, whose magnum opus I feel ultimately to be "Hawksmoor." Here, we deal not with gothic architecture but with the Bard himself, ultimate emblem for all good British things. But what is fascinating ends up in a predictable fashion, & this is my one sole bitch (complaint). As a whole, it's elusive, distinguished & v. unforgettable.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought this book before travelling to London, along with two others that fulfilled the criteria I had decided upon: it must be a novel by an author I haven't read yet, and it must feature London in the title. Strange criteria to pick books, I realise now, and as I try to put into words what I think about this one, I wonder how the other two picks, Martin Amis' London Fields and Iain Sinclair's London Orbital, will fare. [Update: I love-hated [book:London Fields|18830], and London Orbital has not managed to keep me within its orbit for more than a page or two at a time, so it is slow motion reading].

I started with "The Lambs of London" because I love 19th century London, and am obsessed with the milieu of classical literature, so I was convinced I would like the topic. I did not know much about the historical background of the Lamb family, so I read the story as pure fiction, and caught up on the facts later. I don't know if it had been better the other way round, but as a piece of fiction, I found the book rather shallow and lacking purpose and drive, as well as a proper raison d'être. It did not deliver any suspense or character analysis, and everything unfolded with annoying predictability. From the very first moment we know the forger (even though it is never explicitly shown, the hints are so evident that a Middle School mystery book feels more subtle). We have to accept his rationale for the fraud, a rather exaggerated father complex, that he seems to accept as a valid motive for deceit.

We know that the mentally weak heroine is passionately in love with the forger, even though it is a complete mystery to the people she lives with, as well as to herself at times. I found it hard to build a reading relationship with any of the characters, as they all are quite sketchy and appear on the stage one after the other, without any evident red thread.

As for the forgeries themselves, I had a hard time believing that people would have acted in that naive way, even though I know that William Ireland actually did get away with forgery. The way it is shown in the novel seems just too stupid. Within days of the presentation of a new, completely unheard of Shakespeare document, they accept it as genuine, despite the fact that the source remains obscure and the self-proclaimed "medium" - transmitting the new text to the admiring public - is a mere bookseller. The honours he receives as the "finder" are out of place as well. Why would people want to regard him as an author just because he found a manuscript? The whole drama around him is built on the knowledge the readers have of his actual identity, not the perceived role as a lucky bookseller. People treat him as if they instinctively know he has written the pieces, but at the same time, they naively proclaim their "absolute certainty" of the authenticity of the Shakespeare papers. How is that psychologically meaningful to the reader of today? It would have made more sense if the character had been shown in a more elaborate way, but he simply appears, shows his forgeries, gets the world to believe in them, and confesses. That is it. Full story.

I would not necessarily recommend this book, but in a way, I feel compelled to try at least one more Peter Ackroyd to see if I might find some qualities in his work that I didn't grasp in "The Lambs of London". I did that - very unsuccessfully - with other authors I did not like, for example reading Eleven Minutes after The Alchemist or Home after Gilead...

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short sharp burst of creamy historical fiction goodness from Peter Ackroyd; a man who is basically a big walking encyclopaedia of London in "days of yore". I've read both Hawksmoor, The Fall of Troy and The House of Dr Dee and although I wasn't that enamoured of Dr Dee, Hawksmoor gets a big thumbs up and 10/10 for effort, research, and all round weirdness against the magnificent backdrop of St Pauls, both past and present.

The Lambs of London deals with Charles and Mary Lamb (if you were expecting a story about anthropomorphic sheep then you need to look elsewhere). They are best known for sanitising Shakespeare and producing a nice tidy volume of stories based on the bards best work, thus making it accessible to children. Normally they are portrayed as a slightly fluffy brother-sister duo who liked reading and wrote a nice book for kiddy-winks, however they both had fraught personal lives, and suffered from mental illness. Mary went as far as to murder her own mother which probably goes a long way to making her less than child-friendly fodder. At best you're unlikely to have wanted to invite her round for dinner (see cutlery reference below*).

The Lambs of London is a little different because Ackroyd departs from the supernatural theme which he has inserted into his other historical fiction and instead juxtaposes the story of the Lambs' with that of William Ireland. Ireland was charming (possibly) shyster and charlatan who concocted new Shakespeare plays which were duly slurped up by the entertainment-hungry, peri-wigged masses in London at the time. I've got no idea of Charles and Mary ever crossed paths with Ireland but the combination of the Lambs' obsession with Shakespeare and Ireland's slightly less honest obsession with Shakespeare pull them together nicely.

Ultimately I feel a weird sort of connection to Ackroyd because he knows and loves the historic fabric of London in the same way that I know and understand the historic fabric of Liverpool.

( * Watch out for the old cutlery switcheroo when Mary stabs Mummy dearest - in the book she's wielding a fork, but her weapon of choice in reality was a knife. An odd to detail to change, Mr Ackroyd. Personally I'd have gone for the spoon. As Alan Rickman famously said in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves; "it'll hurt more".)

[A. Raca · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

“Her birimizin,” diyordu de Quincey, “bu kadar küçük bir varlık merkezi olmasından nefret ediyorum. Ben. Benim düşüncelerim. Benim zevklerim. Benim eylemlerim. Varsa yoksa ben. Bir hapishane bu. Dünya tamamen bencil insanlardan oluşuyor. Başka hiçbir şeyin önemi yok. (…)
“Kendimin ötesine geçmek isterdim.”

🌠

19. yüzyıl Londra'sı, Shakespeare üzerinden dönen olaylar ;)

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather strange little book for a number of reasons. In the first place, the eponymous characters, the brother-and-sister authors Charles and Mary Lamb (1775-1834 and 1764-1847 respectively) were not the main characters of this story. That honour belonged to one William Henry Ireland (1775-1835), famous as a forger of Shakespearean articles, including a complete play, Vortigern and Rowena, which was actually produced. The majority of the book tells the tale of Ireland’s attempts to foist his handiwork on an unsuspecting public. That he was a contemporary of the Lambs there is no doubt; whether or not he even had any dealings with them has no basis in fact. As it is, many facts are obscured or ignored, most disturbing of all being Mary Lamb’s death at the end of the book—before her brother, whom she actually outlived by some dozen years. Equally preposterous, Mr Ackroyd attributes Mary Lamb’s contribution to their co-authored Tales from Shakespeare (a children’s book which simplifies the language and plots of twenty plays) to Thomas de Quincey, the essayist best known for his Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

But this book is a work of fiction, not of history or biography. The conjoining of the story of Shakespeare’s most infamous forger with his perhaps his most famous interpreters (at least for children) is a delightful and clever conceit. The language is plain, the descriptive exposition kept to a minimum. The picture of the hurly-burly of late eighteenth century London Ackroyd paints is appealing in its squalor and misery.

In general, however, I was disappointed. Probably because of the title: I actually expected more about the Lambs, though I had no previous knowledge of the story of William Ireland. That could have been novel that would have stood on its own, if it were fleshed out; but that is not the novel Ackroyd wrote.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up at the library book sale 8 or 9 years ago. It is on the 1001 list and I wanted to take advantage of its availability (at 50 cents!). Obviously, it has languished on my shelf, patiently waiting my attention. I ignored it because I thought it was a biographical novel of people about whom I knew or cared little. I was wrong, wrong, wrong! In place of a dedication, Ackroyd writes this:

This is not a biography but a work of fiction, I have invented characters and changed the life of the Lamb family for the sake of the larger narrative.

The Lambs, particularly Mary Lamb, are major characters. I was surprised, given the title, that they are not the central characters. That is William Ireland.

The first encounter we see between William Ireland and Charles Lamb is when Charles enters the Ireland book shop and is presented with a small book which has been inscribed by William Shakespeare. Charles and Mary are Shakespeare scholars and Charles is very happy to purchase the inscribed book. Not many pages later, Ireland gives his father the testament of Shakespeare. Had I read the book flap, I might have been fully aware of where this was going, but I did not. Some may think what is there is a spoiler, while others will know the story anyway. I remarked in my last review that coincidences are allowed to happen in fiction and, while fiction this is, Ackroyd is relating some semblance of history. I'm a natural skeptic.

Having almost nothing to do with this novel, I was amused that, within the past 6-7 weeks, I have read two books where the central character is the son of a man who runs a book store. Occasionally, coincidences happen in real life, too. Anyway, I liked them both, but this one shines brightly. I liked the writing style and the characterizations are wonderful. The story is good. Overall it is 5-stars good.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Charles and Mary Lamb are still living at their parents’ home. Charles, an aspiring writer, works as a clerk at the East India Company, and enjoys a drink or three too often at the local pub. Meanwhile his sister, Mary, is trapped in domesticity, caring for her ailing father and her maddening mother assisted only by an aged maid.

The siblings find much-needed escape in reading and quoting William Shakespeare to one another. So, when William Ireland, a 17-year-old antiquarian bookseller and himself an aspiring writer, comes into their lives claiming to possess a “lost” Shakespearean play, the Lambs can barely contain their excitement. As word of this amazing find spreads, all of London is eagerly anticipating star-studded opening night of the play. But is the discovery real or a clever piece of forgery and if so by whom?

Now whilst I rather enjoyed the author's writing style and feel that he must have done his homework, somehow it failed to really grab me. Firstly, this was partly down to my ignorance, it wasn't until after I had finished it that I realised that Charles and Mary Lamb were real people. If I had known this fact earlier, hopefully I would also have known when this novel was set. Instead, I only knew that it was some period after Shakespeare's death. Conversely, once I realised that it featured real people, I was unsure as to whether or not this was meant to be a piece of factual historical writing or simply fiction. Equally I felt that in the end it rather ran out of steam rather than come to some exciting conclusion. Overall, I found this a quick easy read but not a particularly remarkable one.

[Gaetano Laureanti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il fatto stesso che mi abbia tenuto incollato alla sedia fino alla fine mi induce a dargli un bel voto.

Scritto bene, intrigante e coinvolgente, perde una stella per un epilogo un po’ approssimato, forse volutamente scarno.

Il fil rouge è la scoperta di scritti autografi di Shakespeare negli angoli bui della fine del XVIII secolo, in una Londra cupa e vivace al tempo stesso, in cui la passione per il Bardo è ben tangibile.
E la caccia a queste opere comporta risvolti… inaspettati.

Ho scoperto solo dopo aver finito la lettura che sono davvero tanti i riferimenti a fatti realmente accaduti, sebbene romanzati ed impreziositi dall’autore che ne ha ricavato un libro molto piacevole da leggere.

[Virtuella · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a nice, easy read, fairly entertaining, falling a little flat at the end. Apparently based on painstaking research, though if it had been completely made-up, it would have made little difference to me. There are two rather jarring sex scenes that have no connection with the story and which I felt where there just for the sake of it. Other flashbacks and side tracks, for example about the missing girl Anne, also remain unconnected and, unlike in a novel like Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway," they do not achieve the effect of showing how so many people live so close together yet apart which the author had perhaps aimed at. The characters remain two-dimensional throughout.

What puzzles me is why this book is on the List of 1000. Unless I miss something, it's just a run-of-the-mill mystery book, a little in the style of, but a good deal less intriguing than the works of Joan Aiken (none of which appear on the list...).

[Mert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Puanım 2/5 (%45/100)

Elimdeki kitaplar ya ağır ya da bir seriye ait olduğu için araya bir kitap sıkıştırmak istedim. Can Yayınları 7 TL indirimden aldığım bu kitabı tek alma sebebim kapağında Shakespeare olmasıydı. Shakespeare varsa güzeldir diye başladım.

Kitabın başlarında olayların gelişmesi ve bu sırada karakter tanıtımı oldukça başarılıydı. Ayrıca 19. yüzyıl Londra'sını da çok güzel anlatmış Ackroyd. Fakat kitabın ortalarına doğru klişe aşk hikayesi girmeye başlayınca yavaştan sıkılmaya başladım. Neyse düzelir umarım umuduyla devam ettim ve bitirdim kitabı. Çok düzeldi mi bilmiyorum ama kitabın sonları çok güzeldi. Daha düşük puan vermeyi düşünürken bir anda kurtardı yazar.

Kitap daha çok William Ireland ve Mary Lamb üzerinden geçiyor. Nedense bana Aşk ve Önyargı'yı hatırlatan bir kitap oldu. Ireland babasının yanında kitapçıda çalışan bir genç. Lamb ise varlıklı bir ailenin kızı ve sıkıcı bir hayatı var. İki genç birbiriyle tanışıp aşık olduktan sonra hayatları değişmeye başlıyor. Bunun üzerine Shakespeare'e ait olduğu tahmin edilen bir metin bulununca karışıyor her şey.

Kitaptaki en sevdiğim ve yazarın da aslında kitabı üzerine kurduğu şey Shakespeare. Shakespeare'in sanırım bütün oyunlarından, hayatından, sonelerinden ve birçok özelliğinden bahsediliyor. Özellikle William'ın yerli yersiz Shakespeare alıntılarını çok beğendim. Kitaplar içinde büyüyen bu gencin yaşına rağmen olgun ve zeki olması da Shakespeare ile alakalı. Pek okumadığım bir türden bir kitaptı hatta tam olarak ne tür oluyor ondan bile emin değilim fakat Shakespeare seviyorsanız okumanız gereken bir kitap. Romantik elementler de seviyorsanız 5 üzerinden 5 vereceğiniz bir kitap olabilir.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

The storyline of this book is a mashup of two real, but separate, historical events that took place in England in the 1790s. The main players are William Henry Ireland, the son of an antiquarian bookseller, and two fascinating figures of London’s literary community, Charles Lamb and his sister Mary Lamb. Charles and Mary live with their aging parents, and Mary is the primary caretaker for her mentally unstable father. Her mother is ailing in her own ways and is constantly critical of Mary’s actions. The three characters share an interest in Shakespeare. It contains several performances, one of rehearsals for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the other of a previously unknown Shakespearean play.

The novel is structured in alternating scenes of the Lamb’s family dynamics and Ireland’s relationship with his father. It is a story of deception and the psychology of those who perpetuate it. It is also metafictional, since the author is, in effect, fabricating a historical record that did not really occur (as he tells us at the start of the book). It vividly portrays London the era. I particularly enjoyed the many Shakespearean references. Something unexpected occurs toward the end, and to my surprise, after looking it up, I found it was accurate. I found this book creative, clever, and most enjoyable.

[Dana Loo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Premetto che è il primo libro di Ackroyd che leggo, anche se lo conoscevo già di fama. Romanzo storico/letterario, stilisticamente molto fluido, suggestive le descrizioni di Londra da parte del più grande "cantore" della città, profondissimo conoscitore di Shakespeare e nn solo!! Il titolo è un po' fuorviante nel senso che, chi si aspetta una storia centrata sopratutto sui fratelli Lamb, su Charles in particolare, resterà un po' deluso. In effetti si narra principalmente di un giovane falsario di belle speranze e grandi velleità letterarie, William Ireland, peraltro personaggio realmente esistito, che riesce quasi a gabbare nomi altisonanti del mondo artistico/culturale del suo tempo riuscendo a far passare e, far rappresentare, come lavori del grande bardo una tragedia e altri presunte opere che erano in realtà dei falsi magistralmente scritti da egli stesso.
Ho scoperto poi, dopo aver letto il libro, che Ackroyd aveva già pubblicato un altro lavoro, Il ragazzo meraviglioso, sulla vita di un altro notissimo falsario di opere letterarie di fine 700, Thomas Chatterton.
Alle vicissitudini di Wlliam, personaggio che ho comunque apprezzato, motivato da una grande passione ma, anche da un desiderio di rivalsa sopratutto nei confronti padre, si intreccia quella di Mary Lamb, figura tragica, donna sensibilissima, di grande intelligenza, mentalmente instabile, che si macchierà, alla fine, di un grave crimine...
Figura che, ad un certo punto della narrazione, quasi scompare per dare spazio alla vicenda di William...
Allora perché nn scrivere una storia totalmente su Ireland invece di intrecciarla, direi piuttosto superficialmente, almeno per quel che riguarda Charles, ai fratelli Lamb??
Ho avuto l'impressione che Ackroyd si sia dilettato, senza impegnarsi più di tanto, in un esercizio poco più che stilistico, in cui si sofferma molto bene su quelli che sono i suoi punti di forza: la profonda conoscenza di Londra e dei suoi grandi personaggi letterari, Shakespeare tra tutti...

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking for something to read, so I walked to the A's in fiction, and came across this book. I did not realize until the end that it was based on real persons, Charles and Mary Lamb, actually. Perhaps if I were more familiar with the Lambs and Shakespeare's works, I might have enjoyed it more...

Although I read this short read pretty effortlessly, I never became invested in any of the characters. In the end, I felt the book only hinted at the anguish and aspirations of some of its characters. Mary merely seemed a sidebar of the story, Charles a bystander. Granted, it seemed William Ireland was the main focus of the story, but even in him I was left uninterested by the end. He just seemed very one-dimensional.

This story didn't enthrall me, but it passed the time pleasantly.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Lambs of London, despite the title, is mostly about Ireland his foregery of Shakespeare's plays. It is not a boring book, but there is something lacking in it. At times the writer feels one step removed from some of the characters, in particular Mary Lamb who disappers for a section of the novel. The real focus of the novel is William Ireland and his relationship with his father. Ackroyd does an excellent job there showing how the family works. The title, however, is extremely misleading. Ackroyd does start out focusing on the Lamb family, making an excellent character of Mary and focusing on her thoughts and feelings. Later in the book, however, it seems that Ackroyd found Ireland far more interesting.

[Elif · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has an exceptional character.

English: https://elifthereader.com/books/the-l...
Türkçe: http://kitaplikkedisi.com/kitaplar/bi...

[Susan Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plot: This is the semi-biographical story of Charles and Mary Lamb, avid readers and fanatical in their love of Shakespeare, as they meet William Ireland an antiquarian book dealer who has made an unusual discovery.

Since a lot of the events in this book are a matter of historical record, you may know some of the events of this book before you read it. I'm still going to be as vague plot wise as possible because I went in with very little knowledge and I enjoyed the surprises. All I knew of Charles and Mary Lamb was that they turned Shakespeare's plays into prose tales, I had an illustrated collection that I loved as a kid.

What I liked: I thought this book evoked the time period well, the writing was very immersive but not overly descriptive.

Favourite Quote: 'Holborn Passage itself was little more than alley, one of those dark threads woven into the city's fabric which accumulate soot and dust over the centuries. There was a pipe shop here as well as a carpenters workshop and a bookshop. All of them wore with resignation the faded patima of age and abondonment. The gowns were discoloured, the pipes on display would never be smoked and the workshop seemed untended.'

I also really liked how the author wrote the characters of Charles and Mary and their incredibly strong sibling relationship. They are both fairly wealthy and educated the main passion of both of their lives literature. I tend to find that books about avid readers are usually lots of fun.

In particular I thought Mary was written very well. I found it very easy to sympathise with her for many reasons. One being that she is obviously as intelligent as her brother, (perhaps even more), but because she is a woman she has to remain at home in domesticity. She also has a facial disfigurement, in that her face is severely scarred from Small Pox and it is clear that throughout the novel she is becoming more detached and her mental illness is controlling her more and more.

I found Charles harder to relate to, probably because of how condescending he was to his sister. He is very selfish and doesn't try to relate to his family at all, he has a tendency to ignore problems like his deteriorating mental state. He likes to treat her like a fictional character:

'So she is Ophelia', he said, 'Wasting'.

Why must you see everything as a drama, Charles? Mary is not a character in a play. She is suffering'.

All of this is probably understandable in the historical context, but I found out it hard as a modern reader, (and a woman who has in the past struggled with her mental health) to just his behavior in this novel.

As well as interestingly written sibling relationships, the parental relationships are all strained differently. William's Ireland's father always has to be the centre of attention. Charles and Mary's father is suffering from dementia. Although Mary and her mother have the most obviously fractured. I felt like these connections were written very well, and in a relateable way.

What I didn't like: The pacing was my biggest problem with the novel. I actually found it quite hard to get into, which i don't think was to do with the writing or the subject, both of which I liked. It was because of how slow the initial set up in the first 100 pages were. The whole book was only 200 pages long and I felt like the most interesting events that happened in the book happened in the last 50 pages. This just left me with a disjointed reading experience.

Rating: 3/5- The story and the writing did interest me, and if i was rating this book purely on the story it would be 4/5, but the pacing really stunted my enjoyment of this novel so I think 3/5 is a fair rating.

[Yağmur · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Her birimizin,” diyordu de Quincey, “bu kadar küçük bir varlık merkezi olmasından nefret ediyorum. Ben. Benim düşüncelerim. Benim zevklerim. Benim eylemlerim. Varsa yoksa ben. Bir hapishane bu. Dünya tamamen bencil insanlardan oluşuyor. Başka hiçbir şeyin önemi yok.” Biraz daha içti. “Kendimin ötesine geçmek isterdim.”

Karakterlerin konuşmaları sırasında Shakespeare’in oyunlarından alıntılar yapmaları bu kitapla ilgili en sevdiğim şey oldu. Hatırlamak çok güzeldi. Bazı kısımlar, bazı referanslar hoşuma gitsede çoğunlukla bir şeyler eksik hissiyatıyla okudum hep. Sonu ise çarpıcıydı fakat beklenen değildi.

Shakespeare ile alakalı her şey -ne olursa olsun- zevkle okunur efendim.

3,5

[Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In The Lambs of London, as with The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, Ackroyd delights in creating alternate realities for historically relevant literary people and having those people interact with one another in a way that they never did in real life. That being said, Ackroyd so deftly interweaves historical fact with fiction that you have to be sure to read up on the actual accounts of people like Charles and Mary Lamb, lest you end up saying something stupid and factually incorrect when trying to impress your literary friends. Whenever I read Ackroyd’s fiction I get the sense that he is a bit of a mischief-maker. I think that after writing such weighty works as the biographies of London, Thames, and Venice, he probably just wants to have some fun.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Lambs of London by Peter Ackroyd is a fictional glimpse into the lives of Mary and Charles Lamb and their erstwhile friend, William Ireland. The setting is late 18th century, early 19th century London.

We meet the Lambs as adults. Charles spends his days at the office and his nights drinking at local pubs. Mary leads a cloistered life at home, relying on her brother for intellectual engagement and discussion. The novel’s beginning is promising in that it focuses on the Lambs. But then it veers toward William Ireland and his ostensible discovery of new works by Shakespeare. The shift to William Ireland, his fraught relationship with his father, his Shakespearean “discoveries,” and the quest for their authentication becomes the primary focus of the narrative, relegating Charles and Mary Lamb to the margins.

The novel is a quick and easy read and, as a work of fiction, its deviations from historical facts about the Lambs are irrelevant. The story line had potential. The relationship between Charles and Mary would have been fertile ground for exploration. Unfortunately, it is never fully developed. The characters, as a whole, are not fully realized. Mary is the most interesting character in the narrative. She is an intelligent, articulate woman suffocating under the social conventions of the time. Her predictable attachment to William in the narrative is subordinated in importance to his obsession with promoting his discoveries as the genuine works of Shakespeare. Why she descends into madness and murders her own mother is hinted at but, again, never fully explored. This, too, would have been fertile ground for greater development. Although William Ireland’s ostensible motivation to commit fraud is to earn his father’s approval, the extreme measures he takes to gain that approval are unconvincing. Even the title of the book is misleading as the focus is not so much on the Lambs as it is on William Ireland and the reception he receives for his ostensible discoveries.

The strength of the novel lies in its ability to evoke London at the turn of the century. The details are immersive. The muddy Thames, London’s bustling streets, its colorful street characters, and its pungent smells are captured in all their squalor and glory. The few glimpses of the Lambs and their excursions into literature are a delight. The novel held out promise, but its shift in focus from the Lambs to William Ireland diluted its potential.

Recommended with reservations.

More of my book reviews are available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com

[Antonella Imperiali · Rating 3 out of 5]

La passione per Shakespeare è il filo conduttore di questo romanzo e su di essa di basa la storia di Charles e Mary Lamb, ma soprattutto quella del loro nuovo amico libraio, William Ireland (pare che sia realmente esistito) che, appena diciassettenne, riesce ad abbindolare tutti con la “scoperta” di inedite opere del bardo, abilmente da lui “costruite”, riuscendo a farle pubblicare e persino a farle rappresentare in teatro, aprendo anche un “museo” presso la libreria del padre, Samuel. Purtroppo la veridicità degli inediti verrà messa in dubbio e William subirà anche una sorta di indagine, in seguito alla quale la verità salterà fuori.

Un romanzo storico a sfondo letterario, quindi, in cui, in una Londra di fine XVII secolo, si incastrano le storie dei vari protagonisti: quella di William, giovane falsario, grande appassionato di Shakespeare con velleità di artista (anche capace, se vogliamo dirla tutta); quella di Charles, leggermente dissoluto ma in definitiva piuttosto anonimo rispetto agli altri; quella di Mary, una ragazza minata nel corpo e nella mente, sensibile, intelligente ma instabile, tanto che la sua giovane vita verrà segnata, e spezzata, da un crimine atroce. Che tristezza!

Scrittura semplice, sciolta, che lascia però indovinare una profonda conoscenza letteraria degli autori dell’epoca in cui il romanzo è ambientato. Le citazioni shakespeariane (sul libro si leggerebbe scespiriane!!!), infatti, si incontrano più che spesso.
L’epilogo mi è parso un po’ frettoloso, quasi didascalico rispetto a tutto il resto.

Tre stelle quasi intere.


📖 GRI - La parola del mese (ott/19): fratello
🤔 RC 2019 - Esimio sconosciuto
📚 Biblioteca

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lightly based on the lives of Charles and his sister Mary Lamb (you know the ones: of 'Tales from Shakespeare' fame, this is nevertheless fiction. It's an account of how Mary emerges from her limited life of domesticity upon meeting young antiquarian William Ireland. Ireland has apparently made discoveries of his own: and found among a patron's papers a hitherto unknown play by William Shakespeare no less. What happens next? You'll have to read it to find out. But en route you'll be absorbed into the life of 19th century London, and will puzzle to disentangle fact from fiction. All whilst having a jolly good read.

[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of the boooks on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die? Really? That makes me afraid of what else is on that list.

I bought this book with high expectations. I read The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society and first learned about Charles and Mary Lamb when they were mentioned in that. I was instantly fascinated. Here was a true-life story that was just begging for a book. Mary murders her mother (with a kitchen knife!). Her brother Charles becomes her guardian so she won't be committed to an insane asylum (which were fairly brutal in 18th/19th c. England). And together they manage to be part of the London literati and publish their own, still in print, book. It has everything you need in a novel: murder! madness! insane asylums! a touching sibling bond! redemption!

And yet Peter Ackroyd, who I respect greatly as a nonfiction writer, manages to make this book really, really boring.I'm okay with him changing bits of the Lambs' biographical details. I'm not okay with him creating such a pedestrian work from such rich source material. The book ends up feeling more about William Ireland and the Shakespeare documents that he "found" than about the Lambs. If Ackroyd wanted to write a book about William Ireland he should have written a book about him and left the Lambs out of it and waited until he could write a book to do their story justice. The part I was waiting for all along, Mary Lamb's violent outburst, doesn't even happen until the book is nearly over and the aftermath, which I find the truly interesting part about the Lambs, gets brushed past pretty quickly.

But, mostly, this book was just boring. The plot was slow, the characters much less interesting than their real-life counterparts and the random details about throwaway characters (like the fact that the black servant Charles meets for about three pages has been sexually molested for years) were just plain disturbing and unnecessary. I'm going to try some nonfiction books about the Lambs now, which I bet will be much better than what Ackroyd created.

[Lisa Hope · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kirkus Reviews sums The Lambs of London” as “reasonable entertainment for serious Anglophiles.” I am afraid I can do no better than this “damning by faint praise” except that it is probably better suited to Anglophiles than Lamb-ites. Despite the title, the Lambs, while making more than a cameo appearance, are not the focus of the novel. When they do appear, they are so faintly developed as to seem little more than shadow puppets. For one who keeps a volume of Essays of Elia by her bedside, this was disheartening. The Lambs are such complex and intriguing people in their own right it seems shameful to serve them up so flatly, to say nothing of the author making them the gulls of the fraud William Ireland with whom they had no actual association.

Other late 18th century luminaries appear in an also underdeveloped manner - Sheridan and de Quincey, for example. In Sheridan’s case, Ackroyd’s treatment makes him seem rather gauche and laughable. In the case of de Quincey, Ackroyd recounts his early days in London and a little friend he made, then Ackroyd drops that narrative line. Other asides are dropped in that seem irrelevant. One case is the story of a young black servant to a pair of priests. This narrative of a few paragraphs ends with the author telling us that the priests swapped off nightly visits to the child. Why? This develops no aspect of the narrative as a whole. I can’t figure his point other than simply to be salacious. Earlier the account of Ireland’s deflowering atop a carriage also seems dropped in for no really good reason. A less randy irrelevancy is Mary Lamb bringing up Fanny Burney, which is immediately dropped so as to appear to be no more than literary name dropping, a sprinkling in of 18th century tidbits.

I can’t recommend this story to anyone who has a deep interest in the Lambs or Georgian era literature. There are some nice views of London though.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nice little bit of historical fiction, one that weaves together two different true stories to form a third, largely invented one. On the one side is the story of Charles and Mary Lamb, later to publish 'Lambs Tales from Shakespeare', but at this stage living with their elderly parents. In a fit of rage, or madness, Mary kills her mother but is later released into her brother's care. It's a story that's always fascinated me, and clearly Ackroyd: was she mad? If so, and in what sense of 'mad'? The other story concerns a young man who claimed to find a new play and sonnets by Shakespeare, only to be exposed as a fraud. I knew nothing of his life, but they fit together with the Lambs quite well. There are other bits of fact mixed in along the way. I don't know where I'd read before about the young black boy kept and abused by two clergymen, but here he is again, and in a speaking role! Ackroyd knows his facts so well that he's able to select what serves his purpose, and give us a stirring read as a result.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second Ackroyd after Hawksmoor - another "historical fiction" of a sort, though he is usually getting at some other point, the nature of authenticity, in this case, and parent and child conflict.
For background, a well-educated person would know something of the life of siblings Charles and Mary Lamb (I know only enough for the frequent appearance of "ELIA" in crossword puzzles) and one would have to be several more steps immersed in late 18th century London literary life to have heard of William Ireland (I had not). However, cheerful ignorance makes some plot turns more of a surprise than they might otherwise be!
Though there is no evidence Ireland ever met the Lambs, their individual details are not manipulated too much beyond the requirements of fiction and the whole is a fast and intriguing reading experience.

[Maryna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Иногда трогает не книга, а тема. Некоторые идеи настолько беспроигрышны, что из-за них читатель прощает произведению многие недостатки. Такие идеи сеют в сердце читателя зерно близости и она растет там вне зависимости от того, что происходит на страницах книги, а иногда даже и "подтаскивая" их до нужного уровня. Лучше всего здесь привести цитату из "Лондонских сочинителей": "Он чувствовал, что между ними возникла некая близость, хотя не понимал, откуда бы ей взяться; она словно снизошла на них обоих свыше."

Вот и я не понимаю откуда, не понимаю, почему это я поставила книге положительную оценку. Но есть вещи, которые "переиграть" невозможно. Это дети и животные. А в случае с библиофилами, коих здесь большинство, еще и книги. Вот поэтому обреченной на успех есть тема страсти к книге, печатному слову, великому автору, старинной библиотеке и т.д. А теперь еще возьмите писателя с наибольшим количеством фанов на земле - Вильяма нашего Шекспира - и попадание в 1001 books you must read before you die готово.

Но все же я попытаюсь хоть как-то, не смотря на сумбур в голове и отсутствие однозначной позиции к книге, систематизировать свои впечатления.

Лондон. Британская столица вышла у Акройда лучше всего. Реалистично, без пафоса и наигранности, без штампов. Листая страницы книги, мы попадаем не в тот открыточный Лондон, который привыкли себе представлять по телепередачам или кратким поездкам-командировкам, а в тот Лондон, который напоминает ссору с горячо любимым супругом(ой) - вроде бы и сковородкой огреть хочется, а вроде бы и обожаешь до беспамятства. "Выйдя из книжной лавки, Чарльз посмотрел в обе стороны, затем двинулся по темному переулку на Хай-Холборн и вскоре влился в поток пешеходов и экипажей, стремившихся на восток, в Сити, чтобы там раствориться без следа. Это пестрое шествие казалось Чарльзу причудливой смесью похоронной процессии и карнавала; в ней с удивительной полнотой отражалась жизнь во всем ее многообразии. Звуки шагов по мостовой сплетались с громыханием экипажей и цокотом конских копыт, образуя созвучия, свойственные, полагал Чарльз, только городу. То была музыка движения." Веский довод в пользу прочтения "Лондон. Биография" этого же автора.

Персонажи. С моей точки зрения реально слабоваты. Аморфные, непоследовательные и непонятные, однако в то же время довольно предсказуемые. Сложилось такое впечатление, что люди - это вообще второстепенное в данной книге. Если б можно было сделать книгу без людей, Акройд наверное такой вариант бы и выбрал, но, слава Богу, законы литературы не дали ему так поступить.

В обнимку с Википедией. Хоть книга и снабжена множеством ссылок, но мне этого не хватило. Лично я была в восторге, когда мне подапались незнакомые слова типа "ин-кварто", "ин-фолио", "конкорданция", "фронтиспис" - расширение словарного запаса вызывает у меня щенячий восторг. Кроме того, Акройд завалил читателя упоминаниями множества реальные исторических личностей (Малоун, Торнхилл, Гаррик, Дрейден, Каули и иже с ними), которые абсолютно незнакомы русскоязычному читателю. Радует, что тут хоть ссылки были. Но признаться честно, были они настолько куцые, что... опять Википедия, только уже английская.

Наше все. Шекспир здесь везде, он альфа и омега этого произведения. Сошедший с ума старик Лэм вообще разговаривает исключительно цитатами из пьес Шекспира. Все остальные иногда разбавляют их фразами "Да / Нет / Наверное". На первых страницах это как бальзам на душу, под конец стало раздражать. Шекспир в "натуральном" виде гораздо лучше расчлененки.

Про это. Совершенно спокойно отношусь к описанию секса в книге или демонстрации оного на экране, когда вижу в нем смысл. Нет, вы не подумайте, "Лондонские сочинители" - это не порнографический роман. По современным меркам вообще книга для монашек! Всего навсего два абзаца на всю книгу! Хокинг в предисловии к своей "Краткой истории времени" писал: "Мне сказали, что каждая включенная в книгу формула вдвое уменьшит число покупателей." Абсолютная сюжетная неоправданность появления слова "член" в тексте "Лондонских сочинителей" все-таки убедила меня в том, что современные писатели считают, что это слово вдвое увеличивает число покупателей.

Итак, кому бы порекомендовать эту книгу... Влюбленные в Шекспира, Лондон и викторианскую Англию - это для вас! Лично я считаю себя влюбленной процентов на 70, посему оценка...

7 / 10

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A small but perfectly formed novel about a shadowy literary figure, little regarded today, but clearly possessing considerable talent. Ackroyd's portrait of WH Ireland is sympathetic and intriguing, and indeed all the characters are finely delineated and wholly convincing. Ackroyd conveys a palpable sense of London in the late 18th century, bringing to life not just the capital's mean streets and taverns but the Dividend Office where Charles Lamb works, the Drury Lane theatre, the claustrophobic, repressive atmosphere of the domestic interiors. There is comedy, pathos, dramatic irony aplenty, all woven together into a compelling narrative with a rare skill and lightness of touch. It's also a fascinating reflection on our hero-worship of Shakespeare, daring to ask whether we could we tell the difference between the real thing and a skilful imitation - and if not, does that difference really matter?

[Karina Samyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Ackroyd neemt ons mee naar het 18de eeuwse Londen. Als geen ander wekt hij sfeer en spanning op. In het boek ontmoeten twee historische figuren elkaar in hun liefde voor Shakespeare (die ontmoeting is fictief) : Mary Lamb, die in een vlaag van zinsverbijstering haar moeder vermoordt en William Ireland, die werken en brieven van Shakespeare vervalst wat leidt tot een schandaal. Het resultaat is een spannend verhaal dat op het eind naar mijn gevoel wat snel afgehaspeld wordt. Daarom eerder 3,5 dan 4.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I admire William Ireland So Much, what a lad

[SnezhArt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Неовикториана о том, как все приходится делать самому, даже быть великим поэтом.