Landor, Walter Savage

Landor, Walter Savage (1775–1864), was educated at Rugby and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he was rusticated. An intractable temper involved him in trouble throughout his life. In 1795 he published Poems, and in 1798 an epic poem in seven books, Gebir. His collection of poems Simonidea (1806) included ‘Rose Aylmer’. A dramatic tragedy, Count Julian, followed in 1812. In the same year Landor's intemperate ‘Commentary on the Memoirs of Mr Fox’ had to be suppressed. He lived in Italy (1815–35) and separated from his wife in 1835. The Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen appeared in 1824–9, and in 1853 his Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans. His Pericles and Aspasia appeared in 1836; The Pentameron in 1837; the trilogy Andrea of Hungary, Giovanna of Naples, and Fra Rupert in 1839–40; and The Hellenics, a re-telling in verse of various Greek myths, was completed in 1847. His work was much admired by R. Browning and many others, but has not recently enjoyed any great esteem. Boythorn in Dickens's Bleak House is a genial caricature of Landor.