The Times/1925/Obituary/George Somes Layard

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DEATH OF MR. G. S. LAYARD

Mr. George Somes Layard, who was known as a writer, died suddenly at his residence in London on Saturday at the age of 68. Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple and went the Western Circuit. Mr Layard was an enthusiastic book and print collector, and his last book on the successive metamorphoses of Pierre Lombart's engravings of an equestrian portrait, some versions bearing the head of Charles I. and some that of Cromwell, was in its way as absorbing as a detective novel. He also wrote books on Charles Keen, the portraits of Cruikshank, Tennyson and his pre-Raphaelite illustrators, Kate Greenaway (with Mr. M. H. Spielmann), a life of Shirley Brooks, and a work on suppressed plates, as well as some novels. He contributed to the "Dictionary of National Biography," and the "Encyclopædia Britannica," invented a system for the federation of private libraries, and originated a scheme which led to distributing kitchens in London.