A forgotten Victorian children’s book helped me grieve my father

The stories in Mrs Leicester’s School, written by a woman who killed her own mother, were suffused with grief, and finally triggered mine as I was teaching a class of students

When my dad went into hospital for what would be the final time, shortly before Christmas last year, I had been finishing up a lecture series on early children’s literature for the university where I teach. My dad had had a drinking problem practically my whole life, but his alcoholism had worsened across decades. Then suddenly, after years of poor health, his liver just gave up on him. He was dead within days.

Shortly after his death I was due to lecture on a relatively forgotten book of stories for children called Mrs Leicester’s School, mostly written by the English writer Mary Lamb but with parts by her more famous brother, Charles. I was not prepared for how moved I would be by the simple message of one of the stories. That often bizarre and sometimes grim collection of tales for pre-Victorian boys and girls changed the way that I, an almost 40-year-old man, think about grief.