Cordially yours: Sidney W. Landon

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Cordially Yours,
Sidney W. Landon


SIDNEY LANDON
Lecturer - Raconteur - Writer
FOR twenty-five years Mr. Landon has been reviewing the characteristics of GREAT MEN OF LETTERS.  Through his Character Studies that have been given from the lecture platform for the entertainment and edification of audiences in the United States and Canada, he has performed a noteworthy service in behalf of English literature.

Educational Bodies, Literary Clubs, Business Men's associations, Churches, Colleges and Schools have found his lectures a valuable adjunct to their activities.

In his experience as a traveler, instructor, lecturer and student of literary appreciation, he has found a growing interest in that which has to do with the life and work of Great Writers.  Richly endowed by nature with a vivid imagination, he has added much by experience and culture; this, coupled with a keen conception of humanity, enables him to present studies of some of our literary favorites.

Mr. Landon's work is peculiarly adapted to the present-day lecture platform.  It possesses an inate dignity and refinement and has all the variety, with the necessary merit to make it worthwhile; appealing to the popular as well as the most discriminating audiences.

He imparts vital entertaining interest to subjects that to some only have a place in class room or on school rostrum.

He shows a personal acquaintance with his subjects that comes from careful study and observation.



Lecture Subjects

Great Men of Letters and Their Peculiarities.
Treatment from the Character Students point of view.

Business versus Literature; Literature or What Have You?
Business mens organizations and dinner clubs, find these appropriately different.

Edgar Allan Poe.
The cheerless poet.

Homes and Haunts of Literary Workers.
(Illustrated).

Some American Authors and Composers of Song and Story.
(Musical Arrangement).

Famous Humorists.
A discussion of writers that have amused and entertained.


A few of the many important Institutes, Colleges, Schools, Societies, etc., where Mr. Landon has appeared in the past few years.


Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences Brooklyn, N. Y.

Pittsburg Institute of Science and Art Pittsburg, Pa.
Goodwyn Institute Memphis, Tenn.
Twentieth Century Club Detroit, Mich.
Public Forum Bloomington, Ill.
Ohio Weslyan University Delaware, Ohio.
A. & M. College Stillwater, Okla.
St. Marys College Kansas.
Girard College Philadelphia, Pa.
Queens College Charlotte, N. C.
Wesleyan College Macon, Ga.
Teachers Institutes Scranton, Pa., Pottsville, Pa., Lancaster, Pa. etc.




Remarkable Character Studies of Great Literary Men

IN his delightful table talk, William Hazlitt, a choice essayist too little known in these days, devotes some exquisite pages to Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen.  To it he prefixed the verse from Shakespeare Come like shadows so depart and in it he reviews some of the famous lights of English Literature and talks of the reasons why or why not they should be included among those we would wish to see.  Hazlitt makes the very true remark that it is not because of the contents of their published remains that we want to see anyone bodily.  It is, he says, when there is something peculiar, something striking in the individuals; more than we can learn from their writings and yet are anxious to know.  This reflection is in accord with the highly interesting and fascinating Character Studies presented by Sidney Landon in the Methodist Church Tuesday night.
They both charmed and entranced the large audience that gathered at the first of the seasons lecture series that include Ex-President Taft, Miss Myra Sharlow, and Irving Cobb.
Mr. Landon's Character Studies of Hugo, Poe, Twain, Bill Nye, Kipling, Riley, Longfellow, Tennyson, are educational and inspirational contributions.

(Taken from St. Thomas Times-Herald,
St. Thomas, Ontario)



The Literary Pilgrim
S. W. LANDON
ONE of the most priceless possessions of the people of this country is their literature.  By their inheritance from their ancestors, and by the works of their genius, they are in this respect the richest people on whom the sun ever shone.

To know English literature is a liberal education; but to know the lives and characteristics of the writers makes the enlivening works doubly interesting.  We may know the works of the author, but do we know the author himself?

From Chaucer to Kipling, from Poe to Riley, from Hugo to Rostand, exist the charming eccentricities of genius that distinguish them from other mortals.

It has been said that every author portrays himself in his works, even though it be against his will. That may be true, but if you know the characteristics of an author the comprehension of his writings becomes easy; therefore the student of character revels in the biography of our literary men, and the existing surroundings that were, may have been responsible for their activities along literary lines.

The study of character is a science, and in all times art and literature have been the handmaids of science; literature and art traced back to their beginnings seem to have had a common origin and a common purpose.  In the study of the characteristics of our authors we find much in their lives that was closely allied with their best works.  Biography that is authentic is very helpful, although the Literary Pilgrim finds much to interest and inspire him by visiting the scenes that are redolent with memories of our great men of letters.

Today we can visit the scenes of the activities of Longfellow, Holmes, Nye, Poe, Twain, Tennyson, Thackery, Hugo, and others, thereby creating an atmosphere for a better understanding of the characters through the study of their early lives and environments.

To seek out familiar scenes connected with the lives of our writers has been our object from time to time.  It has revealed shrines so numerous, and so interesting, that from these little visits we have gleaned a more liberal conception of the author and his works; to reiterate in order to appreciate the offerings of our great writers, let us study through every scource of information the characteristics of writers.

Ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your soul.




Personal Notices

SIDNEY LANDON PRESENTS CHARACTER STUDIES OF LITERARY MEN
Quintette of Portrayals of Great Writers Revelation.

At one theater a diva (Louise Homer) sang.  She sang some songs that never grow old—some that either have grown or will some day grow old.  And in some spots there might have been senility in the singing.  That was at the Lyric last night.

Two blocks away, at the Goodwyn Institute, there was another concert.  It was a symphony of harmonies, new and old, but all of them were harmonies that will never grow old, sung by voices of eternal youth.

They were the harmonies of the soul; in faithful sequence came vibrant, egotistic, bass-like kinetic utterances of Victor Hugo; minor yet cheerful baritone humor of Bill Nye; pathetic pliant, soulful, miserere, contralto-pitched cryings of Edgar Allan Poe; on the heights, the limpid, pure soprano peaen of the soul of Longfellow rounded into unity by the tenor cantus of the poet loved round the world—our own Mark Twain—all were interpreted, all were registered by the soul and personality of a master—Sidney Landon.



Hugo, The Egoist
Mr. Landon's first portrayal was that of Victor Hugo, whom he described as a great egoist, but one who in his long career told delightfully the histories and sufferings of men and places alike reaching for the divine goal—happiness.  He characterized Hugo when at the age of 80 he greeted a multitude of 180,000 people in Paris with a salute that he had tried like that other person to keep the faith; fight a good fight and that he contemplated death a mere thoroughfare to a brighter land beyond.

Bill Nye's Delsartean contagiously amusing Our Boy quietly and spontaneously quaint and true at the close, struck a tinkling note of appeal.

Edgar Allen Poe, condemned both in his writings and life for drinking—even Dr. Rufus Griswold's criticisms (supposed to be those of a friend) characterizing Poe's works as out-croppings only of an addled alcoholic brain—the wanderings of an absinthe devote, was defended by the speaker.

The poet's misery, his pathos, were depicted in the soul cry, the characteristic that caused him to be styled your poet, and my poet, were limned in tender fashion in the poem, Annabelle Lee.



Mark Twain, World Beloved

The crescendo of the evening came with the quaint, philosophic speech of Mark Twain, given on the occasion of the humorist's 70th birthday.  That Samuel Langhorne Clemens had taught others to be good; had believed it was right that he himself be good (easier sometimes to teach) and that he had received his rich reward, the tributes of the world, was the culminating impression of this, the most remarkable portrayal of the evening.
Like a benediction sung in the cool hours of the evening the artist ended his series with Henry W. Longfellow's patriarchal character in God's Acre.  Brief, yet convincing, it concluded an evening's entertainment, enlightening, ennobling, uplifting, inspiring.

“Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn., Tuesday morning, November 7, 1922.”



Prof. Sidney Landon Discusses Literature and Literary Men

(From Evening Examiner, Peterbourough, Ont.)
He interspersed his unique pictures with a swift and striking type of address that touched lightly on many subjects.  Speaking of the place in life of wit and humour, he quoted Charles Lamb, who said: I think God Almighty Himself must enjoy a joke, otherwise He never would have created some of us.
Literary appreciation in many families seems to be mostly in the wife's name, was another pronocncement who was commenting at the moment on the Packard face and Tin Lizzie brain of many self-styled lovers of literature.
Mr. Landon spoke of many of the younger war poets, of Joyce Kilmer, of Allan Seger, who wrote the prophetic I Have a Rendezvous With Death, of Rupert Brooke, and of Colonel John McCrae, author of Flanders Fields.  He excoriated some publication, stamping them as the work of pot boilers who were ready to dip their pens in filth for the sake of well-filled purses, and recommended, instead of dependence on publicly-appointed censorship boards the construction of censorship methods right in our own homes.  He said I have found in libraries, both public and private, books which are read by young people who would hesitate thereafter to discuss their contents with their own fathers and mothers, and characters that you wouldn't tolerate inside your door, and speeches that you wouldn't allow repeated within your home, walk in and make their abode there between the covers of books.




SIDNEY LANDON PAYS HONOR TO POE ON WTAM
Gives Delightful Hour With Eccentric Genius of Raven

By The Dial Twister
(The Press Radio Tower)


June 8—Once Upon a Midnight Dreary.  Thru English and American poetical history this line and the rest of The Raven run as some of the most lyrical touches ever conceived.
The entire poem was recited with musical settings.  It was part of a delightful Edgar Allen Poe hour arranged by Sidney W. Landon.
Landon in his talk on Poe, a Man Among Men, said that the eccentric artist was more deserving than fortunate, perhaps misunderstood.  He pointed out that Poe loved his young wife with a love that was greater than love, as shown in Annabell Lee.
Thruout Landon's discussion one noted a deep sympathy for the strange, inexplicable character.

Taken from Cleveland Press, June 8, 1926