Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864). Portrait by William Fisher (1817-1895). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Walter Savage Landor (30 January 1775 - 17 September 1864) was an English poet and miscellaneous writer. Landor holds a high place among the writers of English prose. His thoughts are striking and brilliant, and his style rich and dignified.

Life

Overview

Landor, son of a physician, was born at Ipsley Court, Warwick, the property of his mother, and educated at Rugby School and the Oxford, where he earned the nickname of "the mad Jacobin," and from which he was rusticated. His whole long life thereafter was a series of quarrels, extravagances, and escapades of various kinds, the result of his violent prejudices, love of paradox, and ungovernable temper. He quarrelled with his father, his wife, most of his relations, and nearly all his friends, ran through a large fortune, and ended his days in Italy supported by a pension granted by his brothers. Yet he was not devoid of strong affections and generosity. His earliest publication was Poems (1795); Gebir (1798), an epic, had little success, but won for him the friendship of Southey. In 1808 he went to Spain to take part in the war against Napoleon, and saw some service. His earliest work to attract attention was his powerful tragedy of Count Julian (1811). About the same time he married Julia Thuillier – mainly, as would appear, on account of her "wonderful golden hair" – and purchased the estate of Llantony Abbey, Monmouthshire, whence, after various quarrels with the local authorities, he went to France. After a residence of a year there, he went in 1815 to Italy, where he lived until 1818 at Como, which, having insulted the authorities in a Latin poem, he had to leave. At Florence, which was his residence for some years, he commenced his famous Imaginary Conversations, of which the earliest 2 volumes appeared 1824, the 3rd 1828, 4th and 5th 1829. Other works were The Examination of W. Shakespeare touching Deer-stealing (1834), Pericles and Aspasia (1836), Pentameron (1837), Hellenics (1847), and Poemata et Inscriptiones (1847). He quarrelled finally with his wife in 1835, and returned to England, which, however, he had to leave in 1858 on account of an action for libel arising out of a book, Dry Sticks Fagoted. He went to Italy, where he remained, chiefly at Florence, until his death.

Youth

Landor, the eldest son of Walter Landor and his wife Elizabeth (Savage), was born at Warwick on 30 January 1775.

Landor was sent to a school at Knowle, 10 miles from Warwick, when under 5 years of age. At the age of 10 he was transferred to Rugby (then under Dr. James). He was a sturdy, though not specially athletic lad, and famous for his skill in throwing a net, in which he once enveloped a farmer who objected to his fishing. He was, however, more given to study, and soon became renowned for his skill in Latin verse. He refused to compete for a prize, in spite of the entreaties of his tutor, John Sleath, afterwards prebendary of St. Paul's, to whom he refers affectionately in later years (Works, iv. 400).

His perversities of temper soon showed themselves. He took offence because James, when selecting for approval some of his Latin verses, chose as Landor thought, the worst. Landor resented this by adding some insulting remarks in a fair copy, and after another similar offence James requested that he might be removed in order to avoid the necessity of expulsion. He was placed accordingly about 1791, under Mr. Langley, vicar of Ashbourne, Derbyshire (whose amiable simplicity he has commemorated in the dialogue between Isaak Walton, Cotton, and Oldways). Here he improved his Greek, and practised English and Latin verse-writing, though his tutor's scholarship was scarcely superior to his own.

In 1793 he entered Trinity College, Oxford, as a commoner. He still declined to compete for prizes, though his Latin verses were by his own account the best in the university. He maintained his close ties with an old school friend, Walter Birch, afterwards a country clergyman, and always an affectionate friend, and made a favourable impression upon his tutor, William Benwell. He adopted republican principles and in 1794 fired a gun at the windows of a Tory for whom he had an aversion. He was rusticated for a year, and, although the authorities were willing to condone the offence, he refused to return. The affair led to a quarrel with his father in which Landor expressed his intention of leaving home for ever. He was, however, reconciled with his family through the efforts of his friend Dorothea Lyttelton.

1795-1804

In 1795 appeared, in a small volume divided into 3 books, the Poems of Walter Savage Landor; and, in pamphlet form of 19 pages, an anonymous Moral Epistle, respectfully dedicated to Earl Stanhope.

Landor entered no profession, but his father allowed him £150 a year, and he was free to live at home or not as he pleased. He left London for Wales, and for the next 3 years spent his time, when away from home, at Tenby and Swansea. Here he made friends with the family of Lord Aylmer. Rose Aylmer (commemorated in the most popular of his short poems) lent him a story by Clara Reeve, which suggested to him the composition of Gebir. The style shows traces of the study of Pindar and Milton, to which he had devoted himself in Wales.

Gebir, published in 1798, had a fate characteristic of Lander's work. It was little read, but attracted the warm admiration of some of the best judges. Robert Southey became an enthusiastic admirer, and praised it in the Critical Review for September 1799. Coleridge, to whom Southey showed it, shared Southey's opinion. Henry Francis Cary, the translator of Dante and a schoolfellow of Landor, was an early admirer. Heber, Dean Shipley, Frere, Canning, and Bolus Smith are also claimed as admirers by Landor; and Shelley, when at Oxford in 1811, bored Thomas Hogg by his absorption in it. On the other hand, William Gifford, who was ever a harsh critic of Landor, described it as "A jumble of incomprehensible trash ... the most vile and despicable effusion of a mad and muddy brain...."

The 2nd edition of Gebir appeared in 1803, with a text corrected of grave errors and improved by magnificent additions. About the same time the whole poem was also published in a Latin form, which for might and melody of line, for power and perfection of language, must always dispute the palm of precedence with the English version.

1805-1821

His father’s death in 1805 put Landor in possession of an independent fortune. Landor settled in Bath, spending money liberally, with a "fine carriage, three horses, and two men-servants." He had various love-affairs, commemorated in poems addressed to Ione, poetical for Miss Jones, and Ianthe, otherwise Sophia Jane Swift (an Irish lady, afterwards Countess de Molande) . In the spring of 1808 Southey met him at Bristol. Each was delighted with his admirer.

In 1808, under an impulse not less heroic than that which was afterwards to lead Byron to a glorious death in redemption of Greece and his own good fame, Landor, then aged 33, left England for Spain as a volunteer to serve in the national army against Napoleon at the head of a regiment raised and supported at his sole expense. After some 3 months’ campaigning came the affair of Cintra and its disasters; “his troop,” in the words of his biographer, “dispersed or melted away, and he came back to England in as great a hurry as he had left it.”

The chief result, however, of his Spanish expedition was the tragedy of Count Julian, composed in the winter of 1810-11. Southey undertook to arrange for its publication. The Longmans refused to print it, even at the author's expense; and Landor showed his anger by burning another tragedy, Ferranti and Giulio, and resolving to burn all future verses. (2 scenes from the destroyed tragedy were afterwards published as "Ippolito di Este" in the Imaginary Conversations.) However, Southey got Count Julian published by the Longmans. Although showing fully Landor's distinction of style, it is not strong dramatically, and the plot is barely intelligible unless the story is previously known. Naturally it made little impression.

In May 1811 Landor had suddenly married Julia Thuillier, with whose looks he had fallen in love at 1st sight in a ball-room at Bath; and in June they settled for a while at Llanthony Abbey in Monmouthshire, from which he was worried in 3 years’ time by the combined vexation of neighbours and tenants, lawyers and lords-lieutenant; not before much toil and money had been nobly wasted on attempts to improve the sterility of the land, to relieve the wretchedness and raise the condition of the peasantry. He left England initially for France, but after a brief residence at Tours took up his abode for 3 years at Como; “and three more wandering years he passed,” says his biographer, “between Pisa and Pistoja, before he pitched his tent in Florence in 1821.”

1822-1846

The period of Landor's life which followed his move to Florence was probably the happiest and certainly the most fruitful in literary achievement. In 1820 Southey had spoken in a letter of his intended "Colloquies," and this seems to have suggested to Landor a scheme for the composition of "Imaginary Conversations," or rather to have confirmed a project. Landor soon threw himself with ardour into the composition of his prose conversations. The 1st part of his manuscript was sent by him to the Longmans in April 1832. It was declined by them and by several other publishers.

Landor committed the care of it to Julius Charles Hare, who at last induced John Taylor, proprietor of the London Magazine, to publish the initial 2 volumes, which appeared in the beginning of 1824. Taylor had insisted upon omissions of certain passages, and Hare had reluctantly consented. Landor was of course angry, and exploded with wrath upon some trifling disputes about a 2nd edition and the proposed succeeding volumes. He threw a number of conversations into the fire, swore that be would never write again, and that his children should be "carefully warned against literature," and learn nothing except French, swimming, and fencing.

The 2nd edition, handed over to Colburn for publication, appeared in 1826. A 3rd volume, after various delays and difficulties, appeared in 1828, end a 4th and 5th were at last published by Duncan in 1829. A 6th had been finished,but remained long unpublished; not until 1846 was a fresh installment added, in the 2nd volume of Landor's collected and selected works. During the interval he had published his 3 other most famous and greatest books in prose: The Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare (1834), Pericles and Aspasia (1836), The Pentameron (1837).

In 1835 he had an unfortunate difference with his wife which ended in a complete separation.

Character

Landor's loyalty and liberality of heart were as inexhaustible as his bounty and beneficence of hand. Praise and encouragement, deserved or undeserved, came yet more readily to his lips than challenge or defiance. Reviled and ridiculed by Lord Byron, he retorted on the offender living less readily and less warmly than he lamented and extolled him dead.

He was for nearly 90 years a typical English public school-boy, full of humours, obstinacy, and Latin verses, and equally full of generous impulses, chivalrous sentiment, and power of enjoyment. In calmer moods he was a refined epicurean; he liked to dine alone and delicately; he was fond of pictures, and unfortunately mistook himself for a connoisseur. He wasted large sums upon worthless daubs, though he appears to have had a genuine appreciation of the earlier Italian masters when they were still generally undervalued. He gave away both pictures and books almost as rapidly as he bought them. He was generous even to excess in all money matters.

Intellectually he was no sustained reasoner, and it is a mistake to criticize his opinions seriously. They were simply the prejudices of his class. In politics he was an aristocratic republican, after the pattern of his great idol Milton, He resented the claims of superiors, and advocated tyrannicide, but he equally despised the mob and shuddered at all vulgarity. His religion was that of the 18th-century noble, implying much tolerance and liberality of sentiment, with an intense aversion for priestcraft.

Even in literature his criticisms, though often admirably perceptive, are too often wayward and unsatisfactory, because at the mercy of his prejudices. He idolised Milton, but the medievalism of Dante dimmed his perception of Dante's great qualities. Almost alone among poets he always found Spenser a bore. As a thorough-going classical enthusiast, he was out of sympathy with the romantic movement of his time, and offended by Wordsworth's lapses into prose, though the so-called classicism of the school of Pope was too unpoetical for his taste, He thus took a unique position in literature.

On the noble dramatic works of his brother Robert he lavished a magnificence of sympathetic praise which his utmost self-estimate would never have exacted for his own. Age and the lapse of time could neither heighten nor lessen the fulness of this rich and ready generosity. To the poets of his own and of the next generation he was not readier to do honor than to those of a later growth, and not seldom of deserts far lower and far lesser claims than theirs. That he was not unconscious of his own, and avowed it with the frank simplicity of nobler times, is not more evident or more certain than that in comparison with his friends and fellows he was liable rather to undervalue than to overrate himself.

Final years

In 1858 appeared a metrical miscellany bearing the title of Dry Sticks Fagoted by W.S. Landor, and containing among other things graver and lighter certain epigrammatic and satirical attacks which re-involved him in the troubles of an action for libel; and in July of the same year he returned for the last 6 years of his life to Italy, which he had left for England in 1835. He was advised to make over his property to his family, on whom he was now dependent. They appear to have refused to make him an allowance unless he returned to England. By the exertions of Robert Browning an allowance was secured. Browning settled him at Siena and then at Florence.

Embittered and distracted by domestic dissensions, if brightened and relieved by the affection and veneration of friends and strangers, this final period of his troubled and splendid career came at last to a quiet end on 17 September 1864.

Writing

In 1795 appeared in a small volume, divided into 3 books, the Poems of Walter Savage Landor, No poet at the age of 20 ever had more vigour of style and fluency of verse; nor perhaps has any ever shown such masterly command of epigram and satire, made vivid and vital by the purest enthusiasm and most generous indignation.

In 1808 Landor returned from Spain bringing with him the honorable recollection of a brave design unselfishly attempted, and the material in his memory for the sublimest poem published in our language, between the last masterpiece of Milton and the earliest masterpiece of Shelley — equally worthy to stand unchallenged beside either for poetic perfection as well as moral majesty — the lofty tragedy of Count Julian, which appeared in 1812, without the name of its author. No comparable work is to be found in English poetry between the date of Samson Agonistes and the date of Prometheus Unbound; and with both these great works it has some points of greatness in common. The superhuman isolation of agony and endurance which encircles and exalts the hero is in each case expressed with equally appropriate magnificence of effect. The style of Count Julian, if somewhat deficient in dramatic ease and the fluency of natural dialogue, has such might and purity and majesty of speech as elsewhere we find only in Milton so long and so steadily sustained.

To The Pentameron (1837) was originally appended The Pentalogia, containing 5 of the very finest among his shorter studies in dramatic poetry.

In 1847 he published his most important Latin work, Poemata et inscriptiones, comprising, with large additions, the main contents of 2 former volumes of idyllic, satiric, elegiac and lyric verse; and in the same golden year of his poetic life appeared the very crown and flower of its manifold labours, the Hellenics of Walter Savage Landor, enlarged and completed. 12 years later this book was re-issued, with additions of more or less value, with alterations generally to be regretted, and with omissions invariably to be deplored.

In 1853 he put forth The Last Fruit off an Old Tree, containing fresh conversations, critical and controversial essays, miscellaneous epigrams, lyrics and occasional poems of various kind and merit, closing with "Five Scenes on the martyrdom of Beatrice Cenci," unsurpassed even by their author himself for noble and heroic pathos, for subtle and genial, tragic and profound, ardent and compassionate insight into character, with consummate mastery of dramatic and spiritual truth. In 1856 he published Antony and Octavius — Scenes for the Study, 12 consecutive poems in dialogue which alone would suffice to place him high among the few great masters of historic drama.

In the final year of his life he had published a last volume of Heroic Idyls, with Additional Poems, English and Latin,— the better part of them well worthy to be indeed the “last fruit” of a genius, which after a life of 88 years had lost nothing of its majestic and pathetic power, its exquisite and exalted loveliness.

Critical introduction

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne, sketch by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

A complete list of Landor’s writings, published or privately printed, in English, Latin and Italian, including pamphlets, fly-sheets and occasional newspaper correspondence on political or literary questions, it would be difficult to give anywhere and impossible to give here. From 19 almost to 90 his intellectual and literary activity was indefatigably incessant; but, herein at least like Charles Lamb, whose cordial admiration he so cordially returned, he could not write a note of 3 lines which did not bear the mark of his “Roman hand” in its matchless and inimitable command of a style at once the most powerful and the purest of his age.

The sole charge which can ever seriously be brought and maintained against it is that of such occasional obscurity or difficulty as may arise from excessive strictness in condensation of phrase and expurgation of matter not always superfluous, and sometimes almost indispensable. His English prose and his Latin verse are perhaps more frequently and more gravely liable to this charge than either his English verse or his Latin prose. At times it is well-nigh impossible for an eye less keen and swift, a scholarship less exquisite and ready than his own, to catch the precise direction and follow the perfect course of his rapid thought and radiant utterance.

This apparently studious pursuit and preference of the most terse and elliptic expression which could be found for anything he might have to say could not but occasionally make even so sovereign a master of two great languages appear “dark with excess of light”; but from no former master of either tongue in prose or verse was ever the quality of real obscurity, of loose and nebulous incertitude, more utterly alien or more naturally remote. There is nothing of cloud or fog about the path on which he leads us; but we feel now and then the want of a bridge or a handrail; we have to leap from point to point of narrative or argument without the usual help of a connecting plank.

Even in his dramatic works, where least of all it should have been found, this lack of visible connection or sequence in details of thought or action is too often a source of sensible perplexity. In his noble trilogy on the history of Giovanna queen of Naples it is sometimes actually difficult to realize on an initial reading what has happened or is happening, or how, or why, or by what agency—a defect alone sufficient, but unhappily sufficient in itself, to explain the too general ignorance of a work so rich in subtle and noble treatment of character, so sure and strong in its grasp and rendering of “high actions and high passions,” so rich in humour and in pathos, so royally serene in its commanding power upon the tragic mainsprings of terror and of pity. His tender and ardent love of children, of animals and of flowers makes fragrant alike the pages of his writing and the records of his life. He was as surely the most gentle and generous as the most headstrong and hot-headed of heroes or of men. Nor ever was any man’s best work more thoroughly imbued and informed with evidence of his noblest qualities.

As a poet, he may be said on the whole to stand midway between Byron and Shelley — about as far above the former as below the latter. If we except Catullus and Simonides, it might be hard to match and it would be impossible to overmatch the flawless and blameless yet living and breathing beauty of his most perfect elegies, epigrams or epitaphs. As truly as prettily was he likened by Leigh Hunt “to a stormy mountain pine which should produce lilies.” His passionate compassion, his bitter and burning pity for all wrongs endured in all the world, found only their natural and inevitable outlet in his lifelong defence or advocacy of tyrannicide as the last resource of baffled justice, the last discharge of heroic duty.

He was a classic, and no formalist; the wide range of his just and loyal admiration had room for a genius so far from classical as Blake’s. Nor in his own highest mood or method of creative as of critical work was he a classic only, in any narrow or exclusive sense of the term. On either side, immediately or hardly below his mighty masterpiece of Pericles and Aspasia, stand the two scarcely less beautiful and vivid studies of medieval Italy and Shakespearean England.

The very finest flower of his immortal dialogues is probably to be found in the single volume comprising only Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans; his utmost command of passion and pathos may be tested by its transcendent success in the distilled and concentrated tragedy of Tiberius and Vipsania, where for once he shows a quality more proper to romantic than classical imagination — the subtle and sublime and terrible power to enter the dark vestibule of distraction, to throw the whole force of his fancy, the whole fire of his spirit, into the “shadowing passion” (as Shakespeare calls it) of gradually imminent insanity. Yet, if this and all other studies from ancient history or legend could be subtracted from the volume of his work, enough would be left whereon to rest the foundation of a fame which time could not sensibly impair.

Recognition

20 of Landor's poems ("The Maid's Lament," "Rose Aylmer," "Ianthe," "Twenty Years hence," "Verse," "Proud Word you never spoke," "Resignation," "Mother, I cannot mind my Wheel," "Autumn," "Remain!", "Absence," "Of Clementina," "Ianthe's Question," "On Catullus," "Dirce," "Alciphron and Leucippe," "Years," "Separation," "Late Leaves," and "Finis") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

In popular culture

In the 1st season episode of Cheers "The Spy Who Came In For a Cold One," Ellis Rabb's guest character plagiarizes Landor's "She I Love (Alas in Vain!)" when reciting poetry to Diane. He also plagiarizes Christina Rossetti's "A Birthday."

In Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full, Landor's poem "I Strove with None" is mentioned in a discussion in location 8,893 (Kindle).

In Josephine Pullein-Thompson's "Pony Club Team" the second novel in her "West Barsetshire Pony Club" series, Landor's "I Strove With None" is quoted by both Noel Kettering and Henry Thornton

Publications

Poetry

• Poems. London: Printed for T. Cadell & W. Davies, 1795.
• Gebir: A poem in seven books. London: Sold by Rivingtons, 1798
  • enlarged & corrected, Oxford, UK: Slatter & Munday / R.S. Kirby, London, 1803
  • translated into Latin by Landor as Gebirus: Poema. Oxford, UK: Slatter & Munday / R.S. Kirby, London, 1803.
• Poems from the Arabic and Persian. Warwick, UK: Printed by H. Sharpe & sold by Rivingtons, London, 1800.
• Iambi. Oxford: privately printed, circa 1802.
• Poetry by the Author of Gebir. London: Sold by F. & C. Rivington, 1802.
• Simonidea. Bath, UK: Printed by W. Meyler & sold by G. Robinson, London, 1806.
• Ode ad Gustavum Regem. Ode ad Gustavum Exulem. London: Printed by A. J. Valpy, 1810.
• Idyllia Nova Quinque Heroum atque Heroidum. Oxford: Sold by Slatter & Munday & by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, London, 1815.
• Sponsalia Polyxenae. Pistoia, 1819.
• Idyllia Heroica Decem. Pisa: S. Nistri, 1820.
• Gebir, Count Julian, and other poems. London: E. Moxon, 1831.
• A Satire on Satirists, and Admonition to Detractors. London: Saunders & Otley, 1836.
• Terry Hogan: An Eclogue. London: Printed by J. Wertheimer, 1836.
• The Hellenics of Walter Savage Landor, Enlarged and Completed. London: E. Moxon, 1847
  • enlarged as The Hellenics of Walter Savage Landor; comprising Heroic Idyls, &c. Edinburgh: J. Nichol / London: R. Griffin, 1859.
• Poemata et Inscriptiones. London: E. Moxon, 1847.
• The Italics of Walter Savage Landor. London: Reynell & Weight, 1848.
• Heroic Idyls, with additional poems. London: T. C. Newby, 1863.
• The Poems of Walter Savage Landor (selected & edited by Ernest Radford). London Walter Scott (The Canterbury Poets), 1889; New York: W.J. Gage, 1889.
• Poems to Ianthe (edited by Finley M.K. Foster). Newark, DE: The Craftsmen of Kells, 1922.

Plays

• Count Julian: A tragedy. London: Printed for John Murray by James Moyes, 1812.
• Andrea of Hungary and Giovanna of Naples. London: R. Bentley, 1839.
• Fra Rupert (The last part of a Trilogy). London: Saunders & Otley, 1840.

Prose

• Moral Epistle, Respectfully dedicated to Earl Stanhope. London: Printed for Cadell & W. Davies, 1795.
• To the Burgesses of Warwick. Warwick, UK: privately printed, 1797
  • (edited by R.H. Super). Oxford, UK: Printed for the Luttrell Society by B. Blackwell, 1949.
• Commentary on Memoirs of Mr. Fox [printed but suppressed]. London: Printed for the author by T. Davison & sold by J. Murray, 1812
  • (edited by Stephen Wheeler) as Charles James Fox, A Commentary on his Life and Character. New York: Putnam's, 1907; London: John Murray, 1907.
• Poche Osservazioni. Naples, 1821.
• Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (volumes 1 and 2). London: Printed for Taylor & Hessey, 1824. Volume I, Volume II.
  • corrected and enlarged edition, London: H. Colburn, 1826. Volume I, Volume II.
• Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen (volume 3). London: Henry Colburn, 1828.
• Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen ... Second series (2 volumes). London: James Duncan, 1829. Volume I, Volume II.
• Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare .... London: Saunders & Otley, 1834; Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1888).
• Pericles and Aspasia (2 volumes). London: Saunders & Otley, 1836. Volume I, Volume II.
  • abridged, unauthorized edition. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1839
  • complete edition (1 volume). Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1871.
• The Letters of a Conservative. London: Saunders & Otley, 1836.
• The Pentameron and Pentalogia. London: Saunders & Otley, 1837
  • republished in The Pentameron etc. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1888.
• Imaginary Conversation of King Carlo-Alberto and the Duchess Belgioioso, on the Affairs and Prospects of Italy. London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1848.
• Statement of Occurrences at Llanbedr. Bath, UK: Printed by Meyler & Son, 1849.
• Popery: British and foreign. London: Chapman & Hall, 1851.
• Tyrannicide. N.p., 1851.
• Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans. London: E. Moxon, 1853.
• The Last Fruit off an Old Tree. London: E. Moxon, 1853.
• Letters of an American, mainly on Russia and Revolution. London: Chapman & Hall, 1854.
• Antony and Octavius: Scenes for the study. London: Bradbury & Evans, 1856.
• Walter Savage Landor and the Honourable Mrs. Yescombe. Bath, UK: 1857.
• Mr. Landor Threatened. Bath, UK: 1857.
• Dry Sticks, Fagoted by Walter Savage Landor. Edinburgh: J. Nichol / London: J. Nisbet, 1858.
• Mr. Landor's Remarks On a Suit Preferred against him, at the Summer Assizes at Taunton, 1858. London: Holyoake, 1859.
• Savonarola e il Priore di San Marco. Florence, 1860.
• The Pentameron, and other imaginary conversations. London: Walter Scott / New York & Toronto: W.J. Gage, 1889.

Collected editions

• The Works of Walter Savage Landor (2 volumes). London: E. Moxon, 1846.
• Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor (edited by George Stillman Hillard). Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1856.
• Imaginary Conversations (5 volumes). Boston: Roberts, 1876-1877.
• Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor (edited by William Branford Shubrick Clymer). Boston: Ginn (Athenaeum Press Series), 1898.
• Works (edited by Charles G. Crump). (10 volumes), London: Dent, 1891-1893
  • Imaginary Conversations (6 volumes);
  • Poems, Dialogues in Verse, and Epigrams (2 volumes); Volume I, Volume II
  • Longer Prose Works (2 volumes); Volume I, Volume II
• Selections from the Writings (edited by Sidney Colvin). London & New York: Macmillan, 1920.
• Complete Works (16 volumes: volumes 1-12 [prose] edited by T. Earle Welby; volumes 13-16 edited by Stephen Wheeler). London: Chapman & Hall, 1927-1936
  • volumes 13-16 republished as The Poetical Works of Walter Savage Landor (3 volumes). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937.
• Landor as Critic (edited by Charles L. Proudfit). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.
• Selected Poetry and Prose (edited by Keith Hanley). Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1981.

Letters

• Three Letters, Written in Spain, to D. Francisco Riguelme Commanding the Third Division of the Gallician Army. Bath, UK: Printed by W. Meyler & sold by J. Robinson and J. Harding, London, 1809.
• Letter from Mr. Landor to Mr. Jervis. Bath, UK: 1814).
• Letters addressed to Lord Liverpool, and The Parliament, on the Preliminaries of Peace (by "Calvus"). London: Printed for Henry Colburn & sold by George Goldie, Edinburgh, 1814.
• The Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington (3 volumes, edited by R.R. Madden). London: T.C. Newby, 1855, II: 361-395.
• Letter from W.S. Landor to R.W. Emerson. Bath, UK: E. Williams, 1856.
• The Blessington Papers, in The Collection of Autograph Letters and Historical Documents Formed by Alfred Morrison, second series, 1882-1893. London: Printed for private circulation, 1895.
• Letters and Other Unpublished Writings (edited by Stephen Wheeler. London: Bentley, 1897.
• Letters: Private and public (edited by Stephen Wheeler). London: Duckworth, 1899.
• George Somes Layard, Mrs. Lynn Linton: Her life, letters, and opinions. London: Methuen, 1901.
• Edward H. R. Tatham, "Some Unpublished Letters of W. S. Landor," Fortnightly Review, 93 (February 1910): 361-373.
• Baylor University Browning Interests, fifth series (edited by A. Joseph Armstrong). Waco, TX.: Baylor University, 1932.
• H.C. Minchin, Last Days, Letters and Conversations. London: Methuen, 1934.
• R.H. Super, "Landor's `Dear Daughter,' Eliza Lynn Linton," PMLA 59 (December 1944): 1059-1085.
• R.H. Super, "Landor's Letters to Wordsworth and Coleridge," Modern Philology 55 (November 1957): 73-83.
• A. Lavonne Ruoff and Edwin Burton Levine, "Landor's Letters to the Reverend Walter Birch," Bulletin of John Rylands Library 51 (1968): 200-261.
• A. Lavonne Ruoff, "Landor's Letters to his Family: 1802-25," Bulletin of John Rylands Library 53 (1971): 465-500.
• A. Lavonne Ruoff, "Landor's Letters to his Family: 1826-29," Bulletin of John Rylands Library 54 (1972): 398-433.
• John F. Mariani, "The Letters of Walter Savage Landor to Marguerite Countess of Blessington," (Ph.D. dissertation), Columbia University, 1973.
• A. Lavonne Ruoff, "Walter Savage Landor's Letters to His Family, 1830-1832," Bulletin of John Rylands Library 58 (1976): 467-507.

Well I Remember How You Smiled a poem by Walter Savage Landor

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.

See also

Walter Savage Landor - To Age

Late Leaves Walter Savage Landor Audiobook Short Poetry

"A Foreign Ruler" By Walter Savage Landor Poem animation

• List of British poets

References

• Titus Bicknell, "Calamus Ense Potentior Est: Walter Savage Landor's Poetic War of Words." Romanticism On the Net 4 (November 1996) [1]
• E K Chambers (ed) Landor: Poetry and Prose (1946)
• Sidney Colvin, Golden Treasury series (selections from works of Landor (1882)
• Sidney Colvin, Landor (English Men of Letters series), 1881.
• Malcolm Elwin, Landor: A Replevin (1958, reissued 1970)
• Malcolm Elwin, 'Introduction' to Landor: a biographical anthology, Herbert van Thal ed.
• John Forster The Works and Life of Walter Savage Landor (8 vols., 1846
• Robert Pinsky, Landor's Poetry (1968)
• Charles L. Proudfit (ed.), Landor as Critic (1979)
• G. Rostrevor Hamilton, Walter Savage Landor (1960).
• R.H. Super, Walter Savage Landor (1954, reprinted 1977)
•  Swinburne, Algernon, Charles (1911). "Landor, Walter Savage". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 161-162.  Wikisource, Web, Aug. 12, 2020.
• Herbert van Thal (ed) Landor: a biographical anthology (1973) Allen & Unwin,
• Stephen Wheeler (ed) Letters and other Unpublished Writings (1897).
•  Stephen, Leslie (1892) "Landor, Walter Savage" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 32 London: Smith, Elder, p. 54  Wikisource, Web, Aug. 13, 2002.

External links

Poems

• "Elegy for John Keats"
• Walter Savage Landor 1775-1864 at the Poetry Foundation
• Landor in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "The Maid's Lament," "Rose Aylmer," "Ianthe," "Twenty Years hence," "Verse," "Proud Word you never spoke," "Resignation," "Mother, I cannot mind my Wheel," "Autumn," "Remain!", "Absence," "Of Clementina," "Ianthe's Question," "On Catullus," "Dirce," "Alciphron and Leucippe," "Years," "Separation," "Late Leaves," and "Finis"
• Landor, Walter Savage (14 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Landor in The English Poets: An anthology: "To Tacæa," "Fæsulan Idyl," "Iphigeneia and Agamemnon," "The Death of Artemidora," Corinna, from Athens, to Tanagra (from Pericles and Aspasia), Cleone to Aspasia, The Maid’s Lament (from the Examination of Shakespeare), "Ye who have toiled uphill," "Twenty years hence," "Lately our poets loitered," "When Helen first saw wrinkles," "Ssy, ye, that years roll on," "Friends," "You smiled, you spoke," "There are who say," "Why, why repine," "Children Playing in a Churchyard," "Ah! what avails the sceptered race!," "On Southey's Death," "An aged man, who loved to doze away," "For an Epitaph at Fiesole"
  • Extracts from Gebir: The Shell, Prayers, Tamar and the Nymph,
• Landor in A Victorian Anthology: "Overture," "The Hamadryad," "The Death of Artemidora," from Myrtis, "Little Aglaë," "To a Cyclamen," "Dirce," "An Invocation," from Gebir, "To Youth," "To Age," "Rose Aylmer," "Rose Aylmer's Hair, Given by Her Sister," "Child of a Day," "Fiesolian Idyl," "Farewell to Italy," "The Maid's Lament," "Margaret," "On Music," "Plays," "There falls with every wedding chime," "Shakespeare and Milton," "Macaulay," "Robert Browning," "On the Death of M. D’Ossoli and His Wife Margaret Fuller," "To Ianthe," "Ianthe's Troubles," "The Appeal," "The Test," "In after Time," "A Prophecy," "Cowslips," "Wrinkles," "Advice," "How to Read Me," "Time to Be Wise," "The One White Hair," "On Himself," "On Lucretia Borgia's Hair," "Persistence," "Man," "To Sleep," "On Living too Long," "A Thought," "Heartsease," "Verses Why Burnt," "Death Undreaded," "Memory," "For an Epitaph at Fiesole"
• Poems by Walter Savage Landor at Black Cat (63 poems)
• Walter Savage Landor at PoemHunter (118 poems)
• Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A selection

Prose

• "Petition of the Thugs for Toleration" at Quotidiana.org.
• Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A selection

Audio / video

• Audio: Robert Pinsky reads "On Seeing a Hair of Lucretia Borgia"
• Walter Savage Landor poems at YouTube

Books

• Works by Walter Savage Landor at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Walter Savage Landor at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated)
• Walter Savage Landor at Amazon.com

About

• Walter Savage Landor in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Landor, Walter Savage in the Dictionary of National Biography
• Critical Introduction by Lord Houghton in The English Poets
• Jean Field, 'Walter Savage Landor and Warwick'

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: [Landor, Walter Savage
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at Landor, Walter Savage