Imaginary Conversations - Background

Background

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