Samuel Palmer-a new biography

Over Christmas I read Rachel Campbell-Johnston's biography of Samuel Palmer-Mysterious Wisdom. It is a pleasant, enjoyable, sensitively written portrait of this wonderful but somewhat cranky artist. The eccentricity of his dress and the dreadful grief and possible guilt after the death of Thomas More Palmer are shown clearly enough. This is a work which would serve as an enjoyable introduction to the circle of the Ancients. The author also reminds us that Palmer was almost hysterically in love with the old ways, paranoid about civil unrest and was somewhat rabid in his political views. That he had such a father-in-law as John Linnell cannot have helped him to stand on his own two feet psychologically or artistically. Palmer had deep friendships with other artists such as Richmond who in turn was a great help and comfort to Palmer in old age.

I suppose I was hoping for a massive new work of scholarship-and this is not what we find here.Indeed by now the archives must be entirely picked bare. Ms Campbell-Johnston is heavily indebted to previous authors-in particular Raymond Lister who gets a mention as "an earlier biographer" when he more justly might be described as the doyen of modern Palmer studies. And the author only mentions Lister in the text to quote one of his dafter remarks.He is certainly mentioned in the notes/bibliography for she depends as any writer would on his edition of the letters and on Alfred Herbert Palmer's notes . Lister's two biographical works are not listed in the very brief bibliography. There are two works named on comets-both having the same author: comets do not figure largely in Palmer's life.

Old fashioned spellings such as Buccleugh for Buccleuch are not modernised. Papignia should probably be Papigno. Sir William Blake Richmond is referred to at one point as Sir William Richmond Blake. There are supposed to be editors who deal with these things. I recently reread an Oxford edition of Anna Karenina. All its 900 odd pages had been set in real type and I don't think I noticed any misprints.Here Bloomsbury give a page to witterings about the typeface used in the text. It is a fairly feeble effort which with the shoddy paper used in the book adds up to nothing special as a work of book design.

Mysterious Wisdom: the Life and Work of Samuel Palmer: by Rachel Campbell-Johnston, London 2011.

See also my earlier entry on forgeries of Palmer's work