Landor: A Biography of Walter Savage Landor

Jean Field

Brewin, £17.95

Landor (1775-1864) furnishes an interesting link between Romantic and Victorian poetry (see his blank-verse epic Gebir for instance), although he also wrote a good deal of prose, including two books of Imaginary Conversations between literary or historical figures (such as Elizabeth and Mary Tudor). This new life concentrates on his Warwickshire background (where it makes some discoveries) and his friendships with better-known writers such as Southey, Dickens (who portrayed him as Boythorn in Bleak House) and the Brownings (who looked after him in old age in Florence).

A lively, if quarrelsome character (Field makes a good case for him being more pleasant than previous biographers allow), his exploits included firing off a shotgun in his Oxford rooms, and various affairs and libel actions.

• ISBN 1-85858-167-2; distribution by Portland Books, 01926 888776, or email martyn@portlandbooks.freeserve.co.uk