Rogers, Samuel (1763–1855)

Abstract

Samuel Rogers lived a long life, from the time of Samuel Johnson to the heyday of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. As a young man, he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a banker, but he also had ambitions as a poet and a man of letters. In 1792 he published The Pleasures of Memory, the success of which was very encouraging. On his father’s death in 1793, Rogers inherited the family share in the bank, and thereafter lived the life of a prosperous London literary man: he built himself a house in St James’s Street, which he filled with works of art and where he entertained freely. His celebrated breakfasts were attended by writers and politicians, and by poets as diverse as Byron and Wordsworth, Thomas Moore and Ugo Foscolo. Rogers continued to be a respected poet, publishing a small volume, Poems (1812); his second great literary success was the publication of the illustrated edition of his Italy (1830), with engravings by Turner and Stothard. Rogers was offered the laureateship when Wordsworth died in 1850, but he felt that he was by then too old.KeywordsSmall VolumeCommon SubjectSocial OccasionFrench RevolutionPublisher LimitedThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.