Mary took on the comedies and romances: The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Much Ado About Nothing, The Comedy of Errors, Pericles. It consisted of stories based on just twenty plays. Even if it hadn’t, I doubt if Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare would have made it onto the list, but this book must have introduced hundreds of thousands of children to Shakespeare’s plays in the 200 or so years since it first appeared.īrother and sister Charles and Mary Lamb first published their book in 1807. The survey also limited it self to the last 150 years. It was published with the serious purpose of helping to promote childrens’ reading and adults reading to children, a project with the backing of Barnardos and John Lewis. Given that most of these surveys tend to favour recent books or films, I was surprised to find no Harry Potter on the list, but then noticed the survey only asked adults! In fact no book published since 2000 came anywhere in the top 10. Second, perhaps more surprisingly, came the even older and quirkier Alice in Wonderland, published in 1865. In a recent survey of childrens’ favourite books A A Milne’s much-loved Winnie the Pooh, written in 1926 came top. Mary and Charles Lamb by Francis Stephen Cary
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