A Brief Introduction to the Author of Romeo and Juliet

British writer Charles Lamb was born in London on 1775. Lamb was born in poverty, and his father was a lawyer's attendant and servant. Lamb likes reading since he was a child. Because of his father, he read all the books in the lawyer's house. At the age of seven, he entered the London Christian Charity School with excellent results to serve poor children, but failed to enter the university because of stuttering. /kloc-started to make a living by himself at the age of 0/4. He first worked for the South Sea Company in London for 3 years, then worked for the East India Company for 33 years until he retired at the age of 50.

As a writer, the title of "great" can't be added to Lamb's head, but as an essay writer, Lamb is a world-famous family alongside Montaigne.

Lamb was born in poverty, and his father was a lawyer's personal servant. At the age of seven, he entered the London Christian Charity School to serve poor children. He has a good knowledge of Latin and is an excellent student. It's a pity that he stuttered and couldn't get into college. /kloc-at the age of 0/4, he dropped out of school to make a living. He worked as a clerk in the South China Sea Company in London for 36 years, and then worked in the East India Company until he retired at the age of 50. Therefore, he once joked that his real "complete works" are the big account books that are logged into the company every day.

Lamb's life experience is ordinary, but he has suffered many misfortunes. When he was a child, he often went to live in the country grange, where his grandmother was the housekeeper. He met a little girl named Anne Simmons, who was a childhood friend and had feelings. But when he was 20 years old, Anne married a pawnbroker. Under the impact of lovelorn love, Lamb was once insane and spent six weeks in an insane asylum before recovering. The next year, a great disaster happened in his family: his sister Mary went crazy because she was busy sewing day and night to supplement her family. She stabbed her mother with a knife. This incident decided the life track of lamb's life. In order to support his elderly father and take care of his crazy sister, he completely shouldered the heavy family burden on himself. In order to prevent Mary from wandering into the madhouse, he never got married, lived alone with his sister and lived a cold and lonely life.

Most of Lamb's literary writing is done after work. He has written poems, legends, plays and papers on Shakespeare's plays. Art criticism, and Mary co-wrote The Tales of Shakespeare's Plays (the Chinese translation before the liberation of China was called Shakespeare's Yuefu Skills)-a popular book originally written for British children, and now it has become a must-read book for beginners of Shakespeare's plays all over the world.

18 18, lamb is 43 years old and has published two volumes of anthology, intending to "seal the pen". However, a discerning editor-in-chief of a London magazine asked him for a manuscript. The content and form of the article are not limited, and one is published every month. For a writer, this is an extremely precious opportunity. Lamb can write what he is most familiar with and willing to write without any constraints. So he borrowed the name "Ilya" from an old colleague as a pen name and published more than 60 essays one after another. Later, two more Romeo and Juliet were published, namely, Essays of Elias (1823) and The Continuation of Elias (1833), which are the most important masterpieces of Lamb.

Lamb's prose has various contents: writing about his youth, his relatives and friends, his hard life as a shop assistant, or writing about his little pleasure in taking time off from work, or rambling about books, poems, plays, actors he knows, or street scenes in London, beggars, poor children sweeping chimneys, bookworms, bachelors and drunkards, and so on. His brushwork is narrative, lyrical and argumentative, and the language used is a mixture of vernacular words. His mood is harmonious, and his banter implies personal bitterness.

From the point of view of literary history, Lamb's prose belongs to a branch of English romantic literary movement. Get rid of the bondage of rationalism in thought and pursue the liberation of personality and emotion; Lamb is no different from other British romantic writers in his creative methods, and pursues "I write my heart by hand". But the difference is that when other romantic writers (such as Wordsworth) pay attention to the countryside and nature. When lofty ideals and passionate love are the objects of his songs, Lamb takes the city life in London as his description object in his prose. He looks for poetic things from all the people in this city and gives romantic luster to ordinary things in daily life. Dr. Annette Rubinstein, an American scholar, pointed out that Lamb was the spokesman of middle and lower-class "white-collar workers" such as clerks, teachers, accountants and hired literati in capitalist society in the19th century.

Lamb lived at the turn of 18 and 19 century, when the biggest political event in Europe was the French Revolution. In his early years, Lamb, like other British young people, was influenced by the French Revolution, made a group of radical friends, wrote articles and published magazines together, fought against reactionary conservative forces, and was also attacked by the other side. But in the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon failed, the situation in Europe changed greatly, and feudal forces were restored; The British government's policies are becoming more and more reactionary, and Lamb's friends are becoming more and more divided. Some were besieged by public opinion, some were tried and imprisoned, some were exiled, and some were conservative. In this case, lamb writes only about daily chores. Behrel, a critic, said: "Lamb knows that his nerves are fragile, and he knows the heavy burden he has to bear in his life, so he desperately hides in those trivial things and deliberately plays the fool to avoid becoming crazy because of excitement." He has his difficulties. Nevertheless, Lamb has always had sincere sympathy for the poor, the weak, women, children and the disabled in his life. For radical friends in adversity, such as godwin, Hunter and Hai Zi Wright, he has always maintained friendship and tried his best to give support and help. This feeling can be detected in the text of his essays.

Lamb used a special style of writing in his essays, which showed his personality and courage-after reading his essays, he learned about his personal experience, personality and feelings. Therefore, he said: his prose does not need a preface to introduce, because each of his essays is his own "preface." His articles are full of twists and turns, ups and downs, and interesting-this is determined by his unfortunate character and his "miscellaneous studies" developed by reading extensively. His style is like a wonderful flower that breaks through many obstacles, twisted and germinated from under a big stone, and finally opened. When he writes with a pen, he sublimates his personal misfortune into wonderful prose works. He often tells jokes with a straight face. There is a sense of humor in two short articles about suppressing Ilya's edema that others can't imitate. This kind of humor is a tearful smile from a kind heart.

By the way, the word "prose poem" is an early translation of famous prose in English literature after the May 4th Movement in China. Today, it is generally called "essay" or "essay", and its meaning is naturally "rambling prose".