Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) is one of the best loved, but least understood, figures in British art. The bulk of his most original work was produced before he reached the age of thirty, but he continued to paint until his death in 1881. A romantic at heart, he lived on through most of the Victorian age, increasingly at odds with the world around him, yet sustained by the belief and the abiding values of beauty, of poetry and of landscape. This book is the first to examine critically Palmer's career, and to present his work within the artistic and cultural context of his times. It explores the visual and literary sources of his early pastoral drawings, and examines the tensions which lay behnd the apparently idlyllic representations of the Kent village of Shoreham, where he lived from 1828 to 1835. The later part of Palmer's career is discussed against the background of his struggle for recognition. It reveals the role played by critics in shaping the reception of his work, and the importance of the various societies he joined in giving his individual vision credibility and support. Sometimes seen as bland and conventional, Palmer's later works engage with many of the most burning cont