Remembering Companion George Landow

We remember George Landow (1940 - 2023), Companion and founder of the richly varied online resource The Victorian Web, who died on 31st May.

THIS OBITUARY OF GEORGE LANDOW WAS KINDLY SHARED BY HIS WIDOW RUTH.

Landow, George Paul, 82, of Providence slipped away peacefully at home the late afternoon of May 31, 2023. after a brave and aggressive  two-and-a-half year battle with metastatic sarcomatoid prostate cancer. Busy and productive well into his final weeks, in his final year he achieved 57 years of marriage and 78 years of friendship with Ruth, and first-class brown belts in Shotokan karate with Ruth — and was also recognized as Master Model Railroader #737 by Little Rhody, his local NMRA division.

Born in White Plains, New York to H. I. “Doc” and Lillian Landow, his earliest years were spent with relatives in the Bronx due to he untimely death of his mother and his father’s service in World War II. After the war, his father married Florence (Strasmich) and the family moved to Dover Plains when Prof. Landow was 10. At 14, he attended Wooster School in Connecticut and was matriculated at Princeton University as a pre-med at age 16. Although he gained admission to medical school, he deferred entry in order take a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellowship in English Literature at Brandeis; there he earned his first MA in English. The following year  he earned his second at the University of London and then returned to Princeton for his PhD. His dissertation on Ruskin became a prize-winning book. He authored multiple books and articles on Victorian literature and art and computing in the humanities and enjoyed seeing several works translated into Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. His academic honors included a graduate student Fulbright, two Guggenheims, two senior Fulbrights, and a fellowship at Cornell’s Society for the Humanities. He taught at Columbia, University of Chicago, Brasenose College, Oxford, and Brown University in English and Art History departments. He served Brown for three years as chairman of the faculty. From 2000 through 2002 he was the founding dean of the University Scholars Program at the National University of Singapore, after having been brought there as a distinguished visiting professor.

In the UK he was a member of the Athenaeum Club and the Guild of St George.

While his children were young, he enjoyed photography, model making, and coaching his children's’ baseball and soccer teams. After his retirement in 2012, he enjoyed spending time with his children and grandsons, watching Princeton lacrosse, and sharing watching the Patriots with an old classmate of Ruth’s. He also did considerable world traveling while giving lectures before the pandemic. As Editor-in-Chief, he enormously expanded the world-renowned Victorian Web,  establishing a Foundation and editorial board to ensure it would continue without him.

He is survived by his wife Ruth (Macktez), his daughter Shoshana  of Barrington and son Noah of New York, his son-in-law Ethan Stein and daughter-in-law CJ (Brody), grandsons Philip and Malcolm Stein, and sister Marcia Silverstein of Bangor. Shiva will be held at Prof. Landow’s home on June 4 (5 to 8) and 6 (2 to 4). In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the 501c3 Victorian Web Foundation at victorianweb.org.

AS A FOOTNOTE TO THIS, FELLOW COMPANION JIM SPATES SHARED THIS LOVELY MEMORY IN TRIBUTE TO GEORGE:

He was, as I recall, the keynote speaker at a John Ruskin conference at the recently opened Ruskin Library in 2000. During his talk, and at other times during the conference, he announced that he was creating the Victorian Web, emphasizing that a new phase of world communication was aborning. We all thought it a bit “outré.” As we all now know, we were wrong while he was spot on. George deserves much credit and applause for his foresight, which always included his sincere and abiding devotion to Ruskin. I emphasize that his page on Ruskin on Victorian Web HERE is terrific and worthy of serious examination by anyone interested in Ruskin and his work. 

READ ABOUT GEORGE ON WIKIPEDIA HERE