Lamb’s Dream Children: A Reverie

1. Understand the Background

Before reading, learn about:

·       Charles Lamb’s life: His personal tragedies (losing his loved ones) deeply shaped his works.

·       The genre: This is a personal essay, blending fact with imagination.

·       Historical context: Written in the early 19th century, the essay reflects Romantic sentiments—nostalgia, emotion, and introspection.

2. Read Aloud for Emotional Depth

Reading aloud can enhance your understanding:

·       Helps you feel the rhythm of Lamb’s sentences.

·       Brings out emotions—you can hear the wistful tone and shifts in mood.

·       Improves memory retention—hearing the words helps internalize them.

·       Aids pronunciation and comprehension, especially for poetic and old-fashioned language.

3. Active Reading Techniques

·       Underline key phrases: Pay attention to phrases like “Alice’s little right foot in the black velvet shoe”, as these add a personal, emotional touch.

·       Annotate the text: Note Lamb’s sentimental and reflective tone.

·       Identify rhetorical devices: Metaphors, imagery, long flowing sentences—how do they contribute to nostalgia?

·       Pause after each paragraph: Reflect on its meaning before moving forward.

4. Analyze Major Themes

·       Memory vs. Reality: How does Lamb mix imagination with his real-life regrets?

·       Parental Affection: Why does he long for children he never had?

·       Loss & Regret: How do past mistakes shape his sorrowful reflections?

5. Study Literary Techniques

·       Narrative Style: First-person perspective makes it intimate.

·       Tone Changes: Dreamlike to melancholic—spot where the shift happens.

·       Imagery & Symbolism: The children vanish at the end, emphasizing the fleeting nature of dreams.

6. Summarize in Your Own Words

After reading, try explaining:

·       The essay’s message in one paragraph.

·       Lamb’s writing style using examples.

·       Why the ending feels emotionally powerful.

Ø  He also wrote several poems.

Ø  He was part of a literary circle in England, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

Ø  He has been referred to by E. V. Lucas, his principal biographer, as “the most lovable figure in English literature”.

Ø  Lamb was born in London, the son of Elizabeth Field and John Lamb. Lamb was the youngest child, with a sister 11 years older named Mary and an even older brother named John.

Ø  His father, John Lamb, was a lawyer’s clerk.

Ø  Lamb created a portrait of his father in his “Elia on the Old Benchers” under the name Lovel.

Ø  Some of Lamb’s fondest childhood memories were of time spent with Mrs. Field, his maternal grandmother, who had been a servant to the Plummer family for many years. The family owned a large country house called Blakesware, located near Widford, Hertfordshire.

Ø  A thorough record of Christ’s Hospital is to be found in several essays by Lamb as well as The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt and the Biographia Literaria of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom Charles developed a friendship that would last for their entire lives

Ø   On 5 April 1792 he went to work in the Accountant’s Office for the British East India Company.

Ø  Charles Lamb fell in love with a young woman named Ann Simmons.

Ø  Miss Simmons also appears in several Elia essays under the name “Alice M”

Ø  The essays “Dream Children”, “New Year’s Eve”, and several others, speak of the many years that Lamb spent pursuing his love, which ultimately failed

Ø  Miss Simmons married a silversmith and Lamb called the failure of the affair his “great disappointment”.

Ø  Charles wrote a letter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge in connection to the Matricide by his sister.

Ø  In those days, Charles sent a letter to Coleridge, in which he admitted he felt melancholic and lonely, “almost wishing that Mary were dead”.

Ø  On his deathbed, Coleridge had a mourning ring sent to Lamb and his sister.

Ø  Fortuitously, Lamb’s first publication was in 1796, when four sonnets by “Mr. Charles Lamb of the India House” appeared in Coleridge’s Poems on Various Subjects.

Ø  In 1797, he contributed additional blank verse to the second edition and met the Wordsworths, William and Dorothy, on his short summer holiday with Coleridge at Nether Stowey.

Ø  In London, Lamb became familiar with a group of young writers who favoured political reform, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt

Ø  His tragedy, John Woodvil, was published in 1802.

Ø  His farce, Mr H, was performed at Drury Lane in 1807

Ø  In the same year, Tales from was published and became a bestseller for William Godwin’s “Children’s Library”.

Ø  His collected essays, under the title Essays of Elia, were published in 1823.

Ø  “Elia” was the pen name Lamb used as a contributor to the London Magazine.

Ø  The Essays of Elia was criticized in the Quarterly Review (January, 1823) by Robert Southey, who thought its author to be irreligious.

Ø  A further collection called The Last Essays of Elia was published in 1833

Ø  He died of a streptococcal infection, erysipelas, contracted from a minor graze on his face sustained after slipping in the street, on 27 December 1834

Ø  Lamb’s first publication was the inclusion of four sonnets in Coleridge’s Poems on Various Subjects, published in 1796 by Joseph Cottle.

Ø  Lamb’s essay “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare Considered with Reference to their Fitness for Stage Representation”, has often been taken as the ultimate Romantic dismissal of the theatre.

Ø  In the essay, Lambs argues that Shakespeare should be read, rather than performed, in order to protect Shakespeare from being butchered by mass commercial performances.

Ø  William Wordsworth composed an epitaph-poem, “Written After The Death Of Charles Lamb” (1835; 1836), in which he exalts the moral character of his friend

2.      Charles Lamb is referred as James Elia

3.     The essay expresses the feelings of loss and regret faced by the narrator

4.     Charles Lamb entitled the essay “Dream Children” because he never married and, as a result, never became a father to any children. The children he speaks of in the essay were actually the creations of his imagination or fancy.

5.     In fact, the subtitle of the essay – ‘A Reverie’, which literally means a daydream or a fantasy – prepares us for the pathos of the return to reality, although the essay begins on a deceptively realistic note.

6.     In this essay, there are three different settings: 1) Lamb’s real world (the place where Lamb fell asleep on his arm-chair) 2) The place in Lamb’s dream (where he was narrating story to is children) 3) The place in the story which Lamb was narrating to his children in his Lamb.

7.     The great-grandmother of Lamb’s children, Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk.

8. She was working as a housekeeper for fifty years to the Plumers at B Lakesware, Herefordshire.

9.     “The ballad of the Children in the Wood” refers to Babes in the Wood, a traditional children’s tale, as well as a popular pantomime(a type of musical comedy stage production) subject.

10.   The old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey

11.    She knew all the Psaltery by heart: Psaltery is an ancient and medieval musical instrument like a dulcimer but played by plucking the strings with the fingers or a plectrum.

12.   In her youth, she was esteemed the best dancer

13. Cancer came and bowed her down with pain.

14. She believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept

15.   Old busts of the Twelve Cæsars

16.   “Forbidden fruit” is a phrase that originates from Genesis concerning Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:16-17. In the narrative, Adam and Eve ate the fruit of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, which they had been commanded not to do by God.

17.   Their uncle, John L——,

18.   The children of Alice call Bartrum father

19.   Shores of Lethe: Lethe is a river in Hades, according to Greek mythology, whose water caused forgetfulness. It was on the banks of another Underworld river called the Styx that the shades, or ghostly remains, of the dead congregated to seek passage to the afterlife.

20.  Lamb told that he courted their mother ‘the fair Alice W——n’ for seven years

21.   Alice seemed to feel discomfort when the grandmother’s ability to learn things by heart was mentioned. This shows that she was a typical child who won’t like the mention of qualities of others that she found lacking in herself

22.  The surprise ending also points towards the inability of Lamb to get his love responded positively by Alice

23.  As James Elia was lame footed John took James Elia upon his back for outing.

24.  Field, pseudonym for the actual person, was Lamb’s grandmother. Lamb presents her as an ideal grandmother in an imaginary and inflated way before his “dream children”—she was an extremely pious, fearless, and compassionate person besides being the best dancer of the area in her youth.

25.  The essay is subtitled as a ‘reverie’ because Lamb never married and so he never had children. In the essay he created an imaginary picture of a happy conjugal life—a picture which finally dissolves into nothing as he comes back to reality.

26.  Lamb’s elder brother, John L—in his youth was a handsome, high-spirited, strong and fearless person.

27.  Lamb had a sister, Mary Lamb, who did not marry since she had attacks of insanity. She has been referred to here as “faithful Bridget” because she never married and was Lamb’s only companion in his life. At the sudden breakdown of his reverie, he finds her seated by his side

28.  The chief characteristic feature of the essay is the author’s mingling of pathos and humour.

29.  Lamb presents the characters and incidents from his own life—the sketches of his grandmother, Field, his brother—John Lamb, his sister—Mary Lamb, his tragic love-affairs with Ann Simmons

30.  “When he died though he had not been…died great while ago”. – Lamb loved his brother John L— very much. But very shortly after his death it seemed to him that death had created such an immeasurable vacuum in his life that it made impossible for him to comprehend the significance of the difference between life and death.

31. In the course of his day-dreaming, when Lamb looked at his dream-daughter, her physical resemblance reminded him of his dream-girl Alice W—n, a fictitious name for Ann Simmons, who did reciprocate his love.

32.  At the end of his day-dreaming Lamb, coming back to reality, finds his sister Bridget) Mary Lamb by his side

33.  “Here Alice put out one of her dear mother’s looks, too tender to be called upbraiding”- While describing the great country house in Norfolk, lamb tells his “dream children” that the chimney piece of the great hall was decorated by the curving of the story of Robin Redbreasts. At the information that a foolish person pulled it down, Alice’s countenance changed, which suggested that it should not have been done. The word ‘braiding’ here means castigation or censure.

34.  The Dream Children, Alice and John are mere bubbles of fancy.

35. The idea of “seven long years” in the story, which Lamb narrates to his dream children, depicts the seven years of Lamb’s and Ann’s love affair.

36.  After rejecting Lamb’s proposal of marriage, Ann married a man whose name was Bartrum. In his dream, Lamb hears the children saying that they were not Lamb’s and Ann’s offspring; rather, they were Bartrum’s and Ann’s children.

37.  The lame-footed boy in Lamb’s dream story depicts his sister who was mentally retarded. Lamb tells his dream children that their uncle John L – used to carry the lame-footed boy on his back around and would take care of him. This depicts Lamb’s real-life wish for his brother to take care of their retarded sister.

38.  Lamb’s manner of opening his essay is quite conversational and informal

39.  “All its old ornaments stripped”- Through this, Lamb hints at the modernization of society, in which people are forgetting their culture and civilization

40. “I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor armchair”

The bachelor arm-chair symbolizes Lamb’s loneliness and absence of a wife and family

41.    “Busy Idle” is a juxtaposition, a figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are stated together

42.  “…here Alice’s little right foot played an involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted”- In the above extract, Lamb tells about children’s restless and impatient nature.

43.  The theme of memories and past days is quite prominent in this essay

44. The theme of loneliness appears at the end of the essay in the following lines: “We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice called Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence and a name”

45.  As he belongs to the romantic age, the personal “I” is prominent is his essays

46. The subject of the Essays of Elia is Lamb himself

47.  As Elia, Charles Lamb wrote beautifully layered, long, airborne sentences which owed a clear debt to the English essayists of the 17th century, namely, Robert Burton and Sir Thomas Browne

48. Ann married the Pawnbroker of Leicester Square, London, Mr. Bartrum.

49. The idea of the soul waiting for incarnation, sitting on the banks of Lethe, is Platonic.

50.  Dream Children can be called a Prose poem or lyric prose

A.    Lamb never married and naturally never became the father of any children and the children he speaks of in the essay were actually the creations of his imagination or fancy.

B.    Lamb created the children as fictitious characters in the essay

C.    Lamb had a dream of children, but it was not fulfilled

D.   NOTA

A.    Pseudonym for Lamb’s maternal grandmother.

B.    Pseudonym for Lamb’s paternal grandmother

C.    Pseudonym for Lamb’s grandmother

D.   Just a fictitious name

A.    As an ideal grandmother in an imaginary and inflated way

B.    As a kind grandmother

C.    As a fearless grandmother

D.   As a pious grandmother

A.    Extremely pious, fearless and compassionate person besides being the best dancer of the area in her youth.

B.    Extremely beautiful, fearless and pious person besides being the best dancer of the area in her youth.

C.    Extremely kind, fearless and pious person besides being the best dancer of the area in her youth.

D.   Extremely helpful, fearless and pious person besides being the best dancer of the area in her youth.

A.    The essay is a product of his reverie

B.    The essay is creation of imagination similar to having something in a reverie

C.    The essay is creation of his pathetic life

D.   The essay finally dissolves into nothing as in reverie.

A.    To convey to them the value of bond among siblings

B.    To convey to them one of his tragedies in life

C.    To convey to them the difference between life and death

D.   To convey to them John L__’s character

A.    The dog of the house

B.    His sister Mary Lamb

C.    His imaginary wife

D.   NOTA

A.     The sketches of his grandmother, Field, his brother, John Lamb, his sister, Mary Lamb, his tragic love-affairs with Ann Simmons.

B.    The sketches of his grandmother, Field, his brother, John Lamb, his sister, Mary Lamb, his tragic love-affairs with Ann Simmons, his work as a clerk

C.    The sketches of his grandmother, Field, his brother—John Lamb, his sister—Mary Lamb, his tragic love-affairs with Ann Simmons, his children

D.   The sketches of his grandmother, Field, his brother, John Lamb, his sister, Mary Lamb, his tragic love-affairs with Ann Simmons, and the big house.

A.    By deceptively noting the meticulous reactions of his dream children

B.    By deceptively making the children react the way he likes

C.    By encouraging them to react to his story

D.   By making a gesture to them

A.    The great country house in Norfolk

B.    The great country house in Suffolk

C.    The great country house where Lamb lived in his childhood

D.   NOTA

A.    Antithesis

B.    Oxymoron

C.    Metaphor

D.   Periphrasis

A.     Death created a permanent absence as the dead cannot be restored to life.

B.    He was deeply attached to his brother

C.    Death was inevitable and final

D.   He could no longer see his brother

A.    His dream-daughter, with her physical resemblance, reminded him of his dream-girl Alice W—n, a fictitious name for Ann Simmons, who did reciprocate his love.

B.    His dream-daughter’s face resembled his beloved’s face and he became puzzled.

C.    He found a copy in her dream-daughter for Ann Simmons who did reciprocate his love.

D. Suddenly, he remembered the childhood appearance of Ann Simmons, who reciprocated his love, and then his reverie began to break down.

A.  His brother John Lamb

B.  Charles Lamb himself

C.  A fictitious person

D. NOTA

A.  When Lamb was talking of his elder brother’s pain and death

B.  When Lamb told them the murder of two children

C.  When Lamb told them about the death of Field

D. When Lamb told them the story of his failed love

A.  Castigation or censure.

B.  Anger or irritation

C.  Loveliness

D. NOTA

E.  What makes Alice react thus?

A.    She looks beautiful

B.    She extends her legs

C.    She spreads her hands

D.   Her face changed to gravity

A.    Upon the ceiling of the great hall

B.    On the door of the great hall

C.    On the chimney piece of the great hall

D.   On the right wall of the great hall

A.  Owner of the house in Norfolk

B.  Caretaker of the house in Norfolk

C.  Housekeeper of the house in Norfolk

D. Servant of the house in Norfolk

A.  Ghosts of two murdered children in the ballad of the children in the wood

B.  Ghosts of two murdered children in the ballad of the children in the house

C.  Ghosts of two murdered children in the ballad of the children in the garden

D. Ghosts of two murdered children in the ballad of the children in the lake