Famous Last Will and Testament English Author Charles Lamb

About the last will and testament of famous English author Charles Lamb.

WHERE THERE'S A WILL

CHARLES LAMB, English author, died 1834

Last Will: Lamb's friends were astonished to find that his financial worth at death was about Pound 2,000, twice the amount supposed. He left his property in trust for his sister Mary, providing her with an annuity of Pound 240. For Lamb, the symbolic as well as practical act of drawing a will carried a superstition shared by many: an unstated belief in the act's self-fulfilling prophecy that making a will means that one is about to die. Confronting this fear directly, he added a postscript to his 1830 will: "I am not therefore going to die."