IT IS exactly 83 years ago this week that one of Southampton’s most successful sons passed away leaving behind a lasting legacy that, surprisingly, very few people in Southampton are familiar with.

George Edward Bateman Saintsbury was born 168 years ago and went on to become a writer, literary historian, scholar, critic and wine connoisseur.

Although his name is not remembered widely in his birthplace, Saintsbury’s legacy is appropriately recalled on both sides of the Atlantic in a way of which he would most definitely have approved.

The Saintsbury Club, open to ‘men of letters’ and members of the wine trade, still holds dinners to this day, while in the USA a Californian vineyard has been named after the writer who died on January 28, 1933, and who is buried in Southampton Old Cemetery on the Common.

Saintsbury was one of four children of George Saintsbury, who was secretary and superintendent of the port of Southampton, and his wife Elizabeth.

His family later moved to London where Saintsbury was educated at King’s College before entering Oxford University.

Having, after several attempts, failed to obtain a fellowship, he left Oxford in 1868, and on June 2 of that year married Emily Fenn King, the daughter of Henry William King, at the time a well-known surgeon in Southampton.

Saintsbury worked as a schoolteacher and journalist before taking up a position at Edinburgh University, where he produced a prodigious amount of critical essays and books.

In the 1880s and 1890s there was a flood of editions, anthologies and selections from Saintsbury, all with critical introductions which, said another critic at the time, “showed the breadth of his reading and the vigour of his opinions”.

On leaving Edinburgh, Saintsbury, an associate of the author Robert Louis Stevenson, returned to Southampton before moving to Bath, where he would spend the rest of his life.

Although Saintsbury was best known as a scholar during his lifetime, he is perhaps remembered today for his book Notes on a Cellar-Book, recognised as one of the great testimonials to drink and drinking in wine literature.

When he was close to death, a dinner was held in his honour, although Saintsbury could not go.

But this was the start of the Saintsbury Club, whose members are scholars, critics and academics, together with representatives of the wine trade who continue to hold regular dinners.