Charles Lamb (1775–1834) and his elder sister, Mary Anne Lamb (1764–1847), collaborated on three books for children, of which Tales from Shakespeare is the best known. It was the first book to clarify Shakespeare’s stories and played a major part in raising people’s awareness of the great playwright.
Charles and Mary Lamb were born at Crown Office in the Inner Temple in London, where their father was a confidential clerk to one of the lawyers. Charles won a scholarship to the charitable school Christ’s Hospital, and while there became friendly with an older student, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In 1789 Lamb started work as a clerk, first with a city merchant, moving in 1791 to work at South Sea House, and then finally to work for the East India Company, where he filled in ledgers for thirty-three years. He described his time there as ‘a prisoner to the desk . . . almost grown to wood’. Members of the Lamb family were prone to mental instability and for a short time in 1795 Charles was confined to a mental institution. Although his stay there was brief, he lived under a shadow of madness and suffered from other breakdowns during his life. In 1796 Mary, in a fit of insanity, stabbed both their parents, fatally injuring their mother. The court judged her insane and Mary spent about a year in a lunatic asylum before being released into Charles’s care. He looked after her for the rest of his life and she in return repaid him with great sympathy and kindness. Forced to move from house to house because of malicious gossip concerning Mary’s past, they lived in London, and then from 1823 in Islington, Enfi eld and Edmonton. Charles Lamb died in 1834. Neither Charles nor Mary ever married.
Charles Lamb started writing poetry in the early 1790s and to-gether with Coleridge wrote sonnets for the Morning Post. Through his friendship with Coleridge, Charles and Mary got to know the Wordsworths, Southey, Hazlitt and other major literary figures; their various houses became important gathering places for literary friends. Charles tried his hand unsuccessfully at drama and one of his plays, Mr H., a farce, was hissed off the stage at Drury Lane in 1806. His best work is found in his essays and criticism and also in his stories for children – along with Tales from Shakespeare (written jointly with Mary in 1807) he wrote The Adventures of Ulysses (1808) and Beauty and the Beast (1811). Regarded by some as the finest critic of his time his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare (1808) stimulated interest in the old English dramatic authors. In 1820 he started contributing essays signed by ‘Elia’ to the London Magazine. These were successfully collected as The Essays of Elia in 1823; a subsequent volume appeared in 1833. A warm-hearted and well-loved man, Charles was also a great letter-writer and some of his best observations are scattered throughout his correspondence.
In addition to collaborating with her brother on Tales from Shakespeare and Poetry for Children (1809), Mary also wrote the greater part of Mrs Leicester’s School (1809), a book of stories for children which draws heavily on autobiographical detail.
Prof. Douglas A. Gentile, Ph.D., is an award-winning research scientist, educator, and author. Professor Gentile conducts research on the media’s impact on children and adults, as well as how mindfulness practices can reduce anxiety and improve happiness. Named as one of America’s best 300 professors by the Princeton Review, he is a fellow of several scientific organizations, including the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science.
In addition, Ven. Douglas Cheolsoeng Gentile is a Zen Buddhist monk and meditation teacher. With decades of scientific research and training in several styles of Buddhism under his belt, he has dual expertise in Western psychological science and Eastern philosophy.
He wrote and narrated the best-selling audiobook Buddhism 101: How to Walk Easily over Rough Ground and Meditation: The Busy Person’s Guide to Cultivating Compassion and Positive Mind States. Dr. Gentile has appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition and the BBC World Service, and his work has been featured on CNN, Good Morning America, The Today Show, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and hundreds of other media outlets around the world.
Holding a doctorate in child psychology from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Gentile is the author or editor of several books and well over 100 peer-reviewed scientific studies. He holds a M.Div. from Buddha Dharma University and has also trained at the multi-lineage Interdependence Project in New York City.
Ashadi Siregar first came to public attention as a writer in Indonesia in the early 1970s for his humorous novels about campus life, which were best sellers and are still in print. Many were turned into film. Ashadi was born in North Sumatra in 1945, the year that Indonesia declared its independence from Dutch colonial rule at the end of World War II, and spent his childhood there. Upon graduation from high school in 1964, he moved to Yogyakarta in Java, where he completed his university studies in political science at Gadjah Mada University, and has lived there ever since.
Apart from his literary work, Ashadi Siregar has had a stellar academic career. Until his retirement in 2010, he was a faculty member at his alma mater in the Department of Political Studies and the Department of Communications, as well as teaching in the Postgraduate Centre for Performance Studies. From 1992-2014 he was director of the Institute for Research, Education and Publishing (LP3Y), a non-government institute in Yogyakarta that focuses on the development of journalism and journalistic training.
Ashadi lives in Yogyakarta.
Angelo R. Lacuesta has won many awards for his writing, among them three Philippine National Book Awards, the Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award, the NVM Gonzalez Award, and numerous Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards and Philippines Graphic Awards.
He has written several books, including five short story collections, two non-fiction books, and a collection of graphic stories. He has participated in many international literary residencies, fellowships, festivals and conferences.
He is Editor-at-Large at Esquire Magazine (Philippines) and is a member of the Board of the Philippine Centre of PEN International (Poets, Essayists, Novelists).
He lives in Manila with his wife and son.
Andrew Leci is a reformed investment broker, theatre actor, producer, director; an erstwhile television sports presenter and broadcast journalist; a lapsed chef and restaurateur, and a constant op-ed, food, politics, lifestyle, art and sports writer.
Growing up and having been educated (partly and mostly) in the UK, he embraced the expat life in his 20’s and hasn’t looked back since, having founded a controversial theatre company in Malaysia in the early 1990s, whose speciality was political and social satire. Subsequently, he has written for a number of high-profile media publications in Asia and beyond. Having trained as a chef, he helmed an award-winning restaurant and bar in East Malaysia, before becoming a well-known face on the region’s television screens while anchoring football and other sporting events for ESPN STAR Sports, Fox Sports and then Ten Sports. Returning to his true love, writing, Andrew now contributes to a number of publications both in print and online, and has irregular columns for Robb Report and Tatler.
Only Connect is his second novel, after Once Removed, published by Marshall Cavendish in 2009. He lives in Singapore with his long-suffering partner, three equally long-suffering cats, a shrew, 24 goldfish and Punch, the pleco.
Lucy Hamilton grew up in Dronfield, a quiet town in the north of England. She lived briefly in Australia, before moving to Hong Kong, where she began work on her first novel, The Widening of Tolo Highway. The novel is a semi-fictional account of expatriate life in the New Territories, set against backdrop of the 2014 Umbrella Revolution. While writing Tolo Highway, she also trained as a Behaviour Analyst, dividing her time between the USA, Asia and the UK. In 2019, she completed a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Sheffield, where she had previously studied English Literature as an undergraduate. She now teaches in Stylistics at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China.
Bede Scott lives in Singapore, where he is an associate professor in the School of Humanities at Nanyang Technological University. He is the author of On Lightness in World Literature (2013) and Affective Disorders: Emotion in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (2019).
A professional historian and former journalist, Justin Tyler Clark lives with his family in Singapore. His personal and historical essays have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. The Zero Season is his first novel.
Catherine Dellosa plays video games for a living, reads comics for inspiration, and writes fiction because she’s in love with words. She lives in Manila, Philippines with her husband, whose ideas fuel the fire in her writing.
Her Young Adult fantasy novel, Of Myths And Men, has been published by Penguin Random House SEA and is her love letter to gamer geeks, mythological creatures, aliens, and epic quests to save the world. Of Life And Lies is the second book in the trilogy. She is currently working on a few more projects up her sleeve.
She has also penned The Choices We Made (And Those We Didn’t) published by BRUMultiverse, as well as Raya and Grayson’s Guide to Saving the World and The Bookshop Back Home as part of #romanceclass – a community of Filipino authors who are equally in love with words too.
When she’s not lost in the land of make-believe, she works as a games journalist for one of the biggest mobile gaming media outlets in the UK. She one day hopes to soar the skies as a superhero, but for now, she strongly believes in saving lives through her works in fiction. Check out her books at bit.ly/catherinedellosabooks, or follow her on FB/IG/Twitter at @thenoobwife.
Low Ying Ping is the author of the Mount Emily novels, a middle grade/young adult fantasy series featuring time travel and friendship. The first book, Mount Emily, was shortlisted for the Hedwig Anuar Children’s Book Award 2018 and the second book, Mount Emily Revisited, won the Singapore Book Awards 2017 in the Middle Grade/Young Adult category. Three of the books have also been shortlisted for Singapore’s Popular Readers’ Choice Awards. Mount Emily was also selected for inclusion in the National Arts Council of Singapore’s Read Our World: SingLit Book Gift for Schools.
She has also written an English adaptation of the Chinese classic, Journey to the West, for children aged 7-10 years old. Her short story, ‘The Age When Magic Begins’, won second prize in the British Fantasy Society’s short story competition 2018. Her poems and critical essay have appeared in Singa, the journal of the National University of Singapore Centre for the Arts and QLRS (Quarterly Literary Review Singapore). She holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Warwick, UK.
