Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) was an English poet and prose writer, born in Warwick to a wealthy family. Expelled from Rugby and rusticated from Oxford, quarrelsome all his life, he squandered a fortune on an estate in Wales, fought as a volunteer in Spain against Napoleon, and lived for long periods in Italy, where he died. His epic Gebir and his Hellenics were admired by few, but the Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen, published in series from 1824, and The Pentameron established him as a master of English prose, and his short lyrics and epigrams, such as Rose Aylmer, are among the finest of their kind.