Author: Landor, Robert Eyres
Biography:
LANDOR, Robert Eyres (1781-1869: ODNB)
He was born on 10 May 1781 and baptised at St. Nicholas, Warwick, on 13 May, the youngest son and sixth of eight children of Walter Landor (1733-1805), a physician, and his second wife Elizabeth Savage (1743-1829), who had married in 1774. He was educated at Bromsgrove school, Worcestershire, and Worcester College Oxford (matric. 1797, BA 1801, MA 1804, sometime Fellow). Ordained deacon (1804) and priest (1806), he was first curate at Wyke Regis, Dorset (1805), and then Stockton, Warwickshire (1813). He travelled to France and Italy with his brother Walter Savage Landor (q.v.) in 1815-16. They quarrelled in 1820 about money and did not speak to each other for twenty years. He was vicar at St. Michael’s, Hughenden, Buckinghamshire (1817-1825) and then may have lived in Tenby, Wales, for a few years before finally becoming rector of St. James, Birlingham with Nafford, Worcestershire, from 1829 until his death. His first acknowledged work, The Count Arezzi (1824), was widely admired but his second, The Impious Feast (1828), mixed romance and biblical subjects and was criticised for doing so. Later works, The Fawn of Sertorius (1846) and a novel The Fountain of Arethusa (1848), a Dantesque visiting of the pre-Christian underworld in the company of a modern Quaker, were admired for their learning but were never popular. Some critics have felt that he has been unjustly neglected. Eric Partridge published a short biography, appreciation, and selection in 1927 but no revaluation has followed. He died on 26 Jan. 1869 and was buried at St. James the Great, Birlingham, where there is still a grave. He left an estate of under £20,000 and an art collection which included works by Rubens, Caravaggio, Raphael and others. He never married. (ODNB 1 Nov. 2022; CCEd 1 Nov. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 1 Nov. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 1 Nov. 2022; Arthur Symons, The Romantic Movement [1909], 207-9; Eric Partridge, Robert Eyres Landor: A Biographical and Critical Sketch [1927]; Worcester Journal 13 Feb. 1869) AA
Other Names:
- Robert Landor