George Somes Layard

George Somes Layard wrote about art, literature, collecting, and figures of his time. An obituary in The Times records his education at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, his call to the bar, and the scholarly interests that occupied his work. Tennyson and His Pre-Raphaelite Illustrators addresses the visual history surrounding Tennyson's poems, although the surviving volume is catalogued as Tennyson and his Pre-Raphaelite Illustrations: A Book About a Book. The study considers designs made by artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite circle for the 1857 edition of Tennyson's poems. Its subject connects Layard's literary attention with his interest in pictures and book production. His bibliography also included biographies and studies of artists, placing this volume within a career devoted to interpreting cultural figures and the objects through which readers encountered them.