George Somes Layard

George Somes Layard (1857–1925) was an English barrister and man of letters.

Life

He was the third son of Charles Clement Layard, rector of Combe Hay in Somerset, born at Clifton, Bristol; Nina Frances Layard was his sister. He was educated at Monkton Combe school and Harrow School. Matriculating at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1876, he graduated B.A. in 1881, and was called to the bar that year at the Inner Temple, which he had joined in 1877.^[1][2]

Layard became an author, journalist and bibliophile.^[3]

Works

• The Life and Letters of Charles Samuel Keene (1892)
• Tennyson and his pre-Raphaelite illustrators. A book about a book (1894)
• Portraits of Cruikshank by Himself (1897)
• Mrs. Lynn Linton ; her life, letters, and opinions (1901)
• The Life and Work of Kate Greenaway (A. & C. Black, London 1905) with Marion Harry Spielmann
• Sir Thomas Lawrence's Letter-bag (George Allen, London 1906)
• Suppressed plates, wood engravings, &c., together with other curiosities germane thereto; being an account of certain matters peculiarly alluring to the collector (A. & C. Black, London 1907)
• A Great "Punch" Editor: Being the Life, Letters, and Diaries of Shirley Brooks (1907)
• The Headless Horseman: Pierre Lombart's Engraving, Charles or Cromwell? (1922)
• An Amateur Detective (1925)
• Catalogue Raisonné of Engraved British Portraits from altered plates (Philip Allan & Co, London 1927)

Family

Layard married Eleanor Byng Gribble. John Willoughby Layard was their second child.^[4]

Notes

1. "Layard, George Somes (LRT876GS)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
2. Plunkett, Steven J. "Layard, Nina Frances". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/58931. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
3. George Grossmith; Weedon Grossmith (20 November 2008). The Diary of a Nobody. Broadview Press. p. 240. ISBN 978-1-4604-0332-7.
4. MacClancey, Jeremy. "Layard, John Willoughby". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/76193. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)