Samuel Palmer's autobiographical writing, together with the early life by his son and the pathbreaking essay by F. G. Stephens

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) was one of the most original artists Britain has produced. Still a teenager when he met Linnell and Blake - meetings that 'plucked him from the pit of modern art' - he embarked on an intensely personal journey that led to an astonishing outpouring of mystical drawings, and later to leadership of England's first artistic colony, the group who called themselves 'The Ancients' and based themselves in the idyllic landscape of Shoreham. Work from the Shoreham years is perhaps unrivalled in English art for the strength of its spiritual feeling.

Palmer's later work was apparently more conventional, but it never entirely lost the extraordinary acuity and naivety of his artistic personality. Throughout his life Palmer was a great letter writer and jotter-down of thoughts. The autobiographical letter reprinted here, together with a selection of his opinions collected by the editor, Will Vaughan, give a penetrating insight into his mind. A brief biographical sketch by his son, A. H. Palmer, was the first published record of his life. It was published in 1881, together with the pathbreaking essay by the pre-Raphaelite F. G. Stephens, the first major critic to examine his output as a whole and to give due weight to the Shoreham years.

Unavailable for 130 years, this is not only one of the earliest considered reactions to Palmer's work, but one of the finest criticisms of this great painter ever written. This edition is the first publication since 1881 of F. G. Stephens' Notes on Samuel Palmer. It is printed here with Palmer's autobiographical writings, selected and introduced by Professor Will Vaughan, curator of Samuel Palmer, Vision and Landscape at the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 34 pages of colour illustrations cover the span of Palmer's output. 39 colour illustrations