Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer

Edward Lear is famous as the author of “A Book of Nonsense” and of the timeless children’s songs, “The Owl and the Pussycat” and “The Jumblies”. Yet, for this gentle genius, infectious merriment mingled with a deep sadness. Who is the man behind the nonsense? Born the twentieth of twenty-one children, he was rejected by his mother and brought up by his eldest sister. Almost entirely self-taught, at the age of nineteen Lear published “Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots”, one the finest books of ornithological illustration ever produced. Then, at the age of twenty-five, he turned his back on this early success to become a traveller and landscape painter. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, he is now considered to be one of the finest painters of the Victoria age. Always an outsider, yet at ease with the noblest in the land, Lear was a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites and of Tennyson, and was drawing master to Queen Victoria. Loved by the children whom he entertained with his songs and stories, he was an innovator in both literature and art, bringing the largely oral tradition of Nonsense into the literary fold, and accompanying his verses with powerful but simple drawings that were revolutionary in their day and set the pattern for modern cartoon illustration.