Imaginary Conversations is Walter Savage Landor's most celebrated prose work. Begun in 1823, sections were constantly revised and were ultimately published in a series of five volumes. The conversations were in the tradition of dialogues with the dead, a genre begun in Classical times that had a popular European revival in the 17th century and after. Their subjects range over philosophical, political and moral themes, and are designed to give a dramatic sense of the contrasting personalities and attitudes involved. The work The Imaginary Conversations were begun when Landor was living in Florence and were initially published as they were completed between 1824-9, by which time they filled three volumes. The dialogues, not yet divided into categories, were initially given the composite title Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen. With their success Landor continued to write more, as well as to polish and add to those already published. Some appeared first in literary reviews, as for example the conversation between "Southey and Porson" on William Wordsworth's poetry in 1823, predating the first published series of conversations in the following year. Various supplemented editions followed each other until there were five volumes containing nearly 150 conversations. Placing the conversations in the context of his complete works, the reviewer of The Athenaeum commented that "his prose style is poetical in conception and dramatic in utterance; his conversations are, as has been said, one-act dramas, and his dramas are but dialogues in verse." His biographer Sidney Colvin, too, saw in "the excellence of Landor's English, the strength, dignity, and harmony of his prose style, qualities in which he was obviously without a living rival." Against acceptance of the arguments there, however, must be set the evident bias of the author's viewpoint, a tendency satirised in a parody of the time and confirmed by subsequent criticism. Order of conversations In later editions, the conversations were grouped as follows: Classical Dialogues, Greek and Roman. Dialogues of Sovereigns and Statesmen. Dialogues of Literary Men, Dialogues of Literary Men (contd); Dialogues of Famous Women. Miscellaneous Dialogues. Background The possibility has been mentioned that Landor was speaking biographically when, in the course of a later work, he has Petrarch describe how, "among 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