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Introduction
Walter Savage Landor is known equally for his verse and his prose--his best known poetry being short epigrammatic verses such as Rose Aylmer and certain love poems to a friend he called Ianthe. Among his best known prose publications were various volumes of Imaginary conversations.
Landor is also well-known as a letter writer, his public letters to newspapers as well as his witty letters to friends being expressed in clear and memorable prose.
Argumentative as a young man, a brilliant classicist who published numerous works in Latin, all his life Landor attacked injustice wherever he saw it. Although he was sometimes thought to be extremely quarrelsome, several modern writers including Peter Ackroyd (in his 1990 biography of Charles Dickens) and Jean Field (in her biography of Landor, 2000) have realised that his aggressive talk was cover for an extremely sensitive, sentimental and generous character, who was exceptionally loyal to his friends.
The poems in this selection include love poems, epigrams, and many based on classical models, including Dirce, which is strongly reminiscent of Catullus or Horace.
Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat convey'd!
Or Charon, seeing, may forget
That he is old and she a shade.
(additional information supplied by Jean Field, Secretary, The Landor Society of Warwick).
A small sample of the poems from Selected poetry is available on this website.
The full text can also be read online or downloaded free of charge. It is in XHTML format, like this page. Please note the file size is 67.2kb and it may take some time to open-up if you choose to read it online. Downloading for reading later may be the preferred option and this can be typically achieved by calling up an option box. If you have a mouse and it is configured for left click to select, right clicking the link may give you this option. Link to the full text of Selected poetry.
Page created 31 January 2003 and last
updated 31 January 2003
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