Imaginary Conversations is the best-known prose work of the English poet and author Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor

Walter Savage Landor was an English writer and poet. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem Rose Aylmer, but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched by public popularity...

. It comprises 6 volumes of imaginary conversations between personalities of classical Greece and Rome, poets and authors, statesmen and women, and fortunate and unfortunate individuals.

Background

The Imaginary Conversations were begun when Landor, aged 46, had settled down with his family at Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 in 1821 where he had rooms in the Medici Palace and later rented the Villa Castigilione. The roots of the compositions lay in his childhood as he wrote later "When I was younger..[a]mong the chief pleasures of my life, and among the commonest of my occupations was the bringing before me such heroes and heroines of antiquity, such poets and sages, such of the prosperous and unfortunate as most interested me …[and e]ngaging them in conversations best suited to their characters". The unenthusiastic reception of “Count Julian” demonstrated that Landor, while adept at dialogue, lacked the dramatic capability necessary to convert these to the stage and he destroyed another tragedy “Ferranti and Giulio” in frustration at his publishers. The Imaginary Conversations therefore provided a different vehicle for Landor’s art.

At Florence, Landor was corresponding with Southey

Robert Southey

Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...

 who had planned to write a book of "Colloquies" and they considered collaborating on a project. Landor had finished fifteen dialogues by 9 March 1822, and sent them to Longman

Longman

Longman was a publishing company founded in London, England in 1724. It is now an imprint of Pearson Education.-Beginnings:The Longman company was founded by Thomas Longman , the son of Ezekiel Longman , a gentleman of Bristol. Thomas was apprenticed in 1716 to John Osborn, a London bookseller, and...

s. Longmans would not publish, so by the influence of his friend Julius Hare, he managed to get agreement with the firm of Taylor & Hessey to publish them. Some disputes with the publishers followed in which both Southey and Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....

 became involved. Not without some embarrassment to Southey as one of the "Conversations" was between Southey and Porson on the merits of Wordsworth's poetry. In 1824, two volumes were published with eighteen conversations in each. The third volume of Imaginary Conversations was published by Henry Colburn in 1828 but Julius Hare was frustrated by Colburn’s delays and the fourth and fifth volumes were finally published by James Duncan in 1829. Over the succeeding years Landor published occasional Imaginary Conversations as one off pieces and collated a number of them in 1853.

Selected Conversations

Some of the most notable conversations are as follows.

Volume 1 (1824)

• Queen Elizabeth
  Elizabeth I of England
  Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
  
   and Cecil
  Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury
  Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, KG, PC was an English administrator and politician.-Life:He was the son of William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley and Mildred Cooke...
  
  
• Southey
  Robert Southey
  Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...
  
   and Porson
  Richard Porson
  Richard Porson was an English classical scholar. He was the discoverer of Porson's Law; and the Greek typeface Porson was based on his handwriting.-Early life:...
  
  
• The Abbe Delille
  Jacques Delille
  Jacques Delille was a French poet and translator. He was born at Aigueperse in Auvergne.-Life:He was an illegitimate child, and was descended by his mother from the chancellor De l'Hôpital. He was educated at the College of Lisieux in Paris and became an elementary teacher...
  
   and Walter Landor

Volume II (1824)

• Henry VIII
  Henry VIII of England
  Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
  
   and Anne Boleyn
  Anne Boleyn
  Anne Boleyn ;c.1501/1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of Henry VIII of England and Marquess of Pembroke in her own right. Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the...
  
  
• Washington
  George Washington
  George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
  
   and Franklin
  Benjamin Franklin
  Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
  
  

Volume III (1828)

• Epictetus
  Epictetus
  Epictetus was a Greek sage and Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia , and lived in Rome until banishment when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece where he lived the rest of his life. His teachings were noted down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses...
  
   and Seneca
  Seneca the Younger
  Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...
  
  
• Marcellus
  Marcus Claudius Marcellus
  Marcus Claudius Marcellus , five times elected as consul of the Roman Republic, was an important Roman military leader during the Gallic War of 225 BC and the Second Punic War...
  
   and Hannibal

Volume IV (1829)

• Diogenes
  Diogenes of Sinope
  Diogenes the Cynic was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. Also known as Diogenes of Sinope , he was born in Sinope , an Ionian colony on the Black Sea , in 412 or 404 BCE and died at Corinth in 323 BCE.Diogenes of Sinope was a controversial figure...
  
   and Plato
  Plato
  Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
  
    Text
• John of Gaunt
  John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster
  John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster , KG was a member of the House of Plantagenet, the third surviving son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault...
  
   and Joanna of Kent
  Joan of Kent
  Joan, Countess of Kent , known to history as The Fair Maid of Kent, was the first English Princess of Wales...
  
  
• Lady Lisle
  Alice Lisle
  Lady Alice Lisle , commonly known as Dame Alicia Lisle or Dame Alice Lyle, was a landed lady of the English county of Hampshire, who was executed for harbouring fugitives after the defeat of the Monmouth Rebellion at the Battle of Sedgemoor.-Family:Dame Alice was a daughter of Sir White Beconshaw...
  
   and Elizabeth Gaunt
• Leofric
  Leofric, Earl of Mercia
  Leofric was the Earl of Mercia and founded monasteries at Coventry and Much Wenlock. Leofric is remembered as the husband of Lady Godiva.-Life and political influence:...
  
   and Godiva
  Lady Godiva
  Godiva , often referred to as Lady Godiva , was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants...
  
  
• Mr Pitt
  William Pitt the Younger
  William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...
  
   and Mr Canning
  George Canning
  George Canning PC, FRS was a British statesman and politician who served as Foreign Secretary and briefly Prime Minister.-Early life: 1770–1793:...
  
  

Volume V (1829)

• Epicurus
  Epicurus
  Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...
  
  , Leontion
  Leontion
  Leontion was a Greek Epicurean philosopher.She was a pupil of Epicurus and his philosophy. She was the companion of Metrodorus of Lampsacus. The information we have about her is scant. She was said to have been a hetaera - a courtesan or prostitute. This might be misogynistic or anti-Epicurean...
  
   and Ternissa

Published in The Book of Beauty (1844)
Aesop

Aesop

Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...

 and Rhodope

Critique by Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...

Volumes in the 1882 edition

1. Classical dialogues, Greek and Roman
2. Dialogues of sovereigns and statesmen
3. Dialogues of literary men
4. Dialogues of literary men (continued)
5. Dialogues of famous women, and miscellaneous dialogues
6. Miscellaneous dialogues (concluded)