Conville & Walsh

On the evening of 22 September 1796, Mary Lamb killed her mother.

A schizophrenic in the days before medication, she was unusually lucky in the response of both the authorities and the press of the day. In 1796, she was freed when her brother Charles undertook to be her life-long guardian, companion and protector.

THE DEVIL KISSED HER narrates and examines Mary’s life, exploring how her life and Charles’s life followed the contours of Mary’s manic depression to become a roller-coaster of delight and despair, punctuated by moments of extraordinary success as writers.

Living in London on a small income, they struggled to lead a normal life. Intolerant neighbours forced them to move eight times in four years, and when Mary showed signs of madness, she packed her straitjacket into her bag and, both of them weeping, allowed Charles to take her to the madhouse until she was well again.

But when Mary was sane, they read, wrote and played cards together. They went to the theatre and entertained friends such as Coleridge and Hazlitt, holidayed in the country and wrote charming and successful books for children, the best and most enduring being Tales from Shakespeare. Mary may have been cursed with insanity but she was also blessed with qualities – sympathy, tact, unpretentiousness, kindness, the gift of hospitality – which drew and endeared people to her.