Lamb helped Godwin with other literary ventures before the publishing business was started. In 1800 he wrote an epilogue to his tragedy of "Antonio" (see the essay in Vol. II., "The Old Actors," for a description of the luckless first night), and he advised him in the composition of "Faulkener," another tragedy, which failed in 1807 and which also had a prologue by Lamb. And a letter is extant showing Lamb toiling at a review of Godwin's Chaucer in 1803, but the review itself is not forthcoming.
The publishing business was started in 1805 on Mrs. Godwin's initiative. At first, owing to the undesirability of connecting the name of a political and moral firebrand like Godwin with books for children, it was arranged that the business, which was in Hanway Street, Oxford Street, should bear the name of the manager, Thomas Hodgkins, while the books contributed by Godwin were to be signed Edward Baldwin. In 1806, however, Mrs. Godwin opened a shop at 41 Skinner Street, Snow Hill (now demolished), and published in her own name as M.J. Godwin & Co., at The Children's Library.
For her the Lambs wrote The King and Queen of Hearts (by Charles
Lamb), 1805; Tales from Shakespear, 1807; The Adventures of
Ulysses (by Charles Lamb), 1808; Mrs. Leicester's School and Poetry
for Children, 1809; and Prince Dorus (by Charles Lamb), 1811. Mrs.
Godwin translated tales from the French, Godwin contributed Baldwin's
Fables, Baldwin's Pantheon, and histories of Greece, England and
Rome, and Hazlitt wrote an English Grammar. The principal illustrator
to the firm was William Mulready.
Although Lamb had the most cordial disliking for Mrs. Godwin, he always stood by his old friend her husband. Between 1811 and 1821 the two men seem to have had little to do with each other; but in 1822 Lamb came to Godwin's assistance to much purpose. The title to Godwin's house in Skinner Street was successfully contested in that year, and Godwin became a bankrupt. A fund was therefore set on foot for him by Lamb and others, Lamb's own contribution being £50. Godwin, however, never rightly rallied, and thenceforward lived very quietly, wrote the History of the Commonwealth and Lives of the Necromancers, and died in 1836. Mrs. Godwin survived him until 1841.
Knowing what we do—from Dowden's Shelley and other sources—it is not possible greatly to admire Godwin's character, nor is the second Mrs. Godwin a subject for enthusiasm; but the part played by them in the Lambs' literary life was extremely valuable. Charles Lamb had, it is true, other stimulus, and without his work for children, sweet though it is, his name would still be a household word; but Mary Lamb might, but for the Godwins, have gone almost silent to the grave. Her writings, with their sweet gravity and tender simplicity, were called forth wholly by the Bad Baby, as Lamb called Mrs. Godwin.
Lamb's views on the literature of the nursery had crystallised long before he began to write children's books himself. In a letter to Coleridge, October 23,1802, he had said:—
"'Goody Two Shoes' is almost out of print. Mrs. Barbauld's stuff has banished all the old classics of the nursery; and the shopman at Newberry's hardly deigned to reach them off an old exploded corner of a shelf, when Mary asked for them. Mrs. B.'s and Mrs. Trimmer's nonsense lay in piles about. Knowledge insignificant and vapid as Mrs. Barbauld's books convey, it seems, must come to a child in the shape of knowledge, and his empty noddle must be turned with conceit of his own powers when he has learnt, that a horse is an animal, and Billy is better than a horse, and such like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild tales, which made the child a man, while all the while he suspected himself to be no bigger than a child. Science has succeeded to poetry no less in the little walks of children than with men. Is there no possibility of averting this sore evil? Think what you would have been now, if, instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!"
Hence when the time came Lamb was all ready with a nursery method of his own.
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Page 1. TALES FROM SHAKESPEAR.