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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:
Edward Lear |
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Oxford Grove Art:
Edward Lear |
(b Holloway, London, 12 May 1812; d San Remo, Italy, 29 Jan 1888). English painter, draughtsman, illustrator and writer. In the 1860s Lear described himself as 'Greek Topographical Painter par excellence', aspiring to the title of 'Painter-Laureate and Boshproducing-Luminary forthwith' (quoted in 1983 exh. cat., p. 14). This whimsical summary of his versatile activities as topographical draughtsman, oil painter, traveller, writer and illustrator of nonsense rhymes and stories is typical of Lear's idiosyncratic literary style. It reflected his eccentric personality. He was epileptic and prone to fits of deep depression. In addition, owing to family misfortunes, he was brought up by his eldest sister Ann. The neglect of his mother, ill-health, weak sight and poverty all contributed to a lifelong sense of insecurity.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:
Edward Lear |
The English writer and artist Edward Lear (1812-1888) achieved fame as a lithographer, landscape artist, and author and illustrator of numerous travel books. He is now remembered, however, for his five volumes of nonsense poetry and prose.
Edward Lear was born on May 12, 1812, in Halloway, one of the last of 21 children of a prosperous stockbroker. His childhood was passed in a comfortable home in Highgate, where, because of his epilepsy and asthma, he was educated by his sisters Anne and Sarah. They introduced him to sketching and coloring. He lacked formal training, but his interest and energy made him a skilled draftsman.
When Edward was 13, his father's financial disasters disrupted the family. A small income enabled Anne to provide a home for Edward. From the age of 15 to 18, he helped support himself by drawings made for doctors and hospitals. A friend got him a commission from the Zoological Society to draw the birds in the London zoo. The 42 hand-colored lithographs of his book The Family of Psittacidae or Parrots have been compared favorably to the drawings of J. J. Audubon.
While working at the zoo, Lear was invited by Lord Derby to make drawings of the menagerie on his estate of Knowsley. In the 4 years he spent there, he became a favorite with the grandchildren. For them he created his first Nonsense Book, a collection of 50 limericks illustrated with delightful nonsense drawings. Trips to northern England at this time woke a desire to paint romantic landscape, especially because close drawing injured his sight. He resolved to go to Rome, where he hoped to sell his watercolors to English residents. Until 1848 Rome remained his center of activity from which he made trips about Europe, Asia, and Africa in search of subject matter for his landscapes.
The need to improve his art induced Lear to invest a legacy in study at the Royal Academy in London. Two years of the slow, outmoded course discouraged him. He accepted an invitation from Holman Hunt to exchange lessons in Italian for help in oil painting. The relationship was fruitful. Hunt became "Daddy Hunt," an artistic support to the older, lonely man. He did a number of oil landscapes between 1840 and 1853 and exhibited the most ambitious of these at the Royal Academy from 1850 to 1853. They did not sell at the price he asked, so he returned to the smaller watercolors and the lithographs for his travel books.
Living much in hotels, Lear met the children for whom he wrote the poems and prose and drew the illustrations that were published at intervals from 1846 to 1877. For casually met child friends he created the inimitable "Owl and the Pussy Cat," "The Pobble's Toes," "The Jumblies," and others.
For the last 14 years of his life Lear lived in a home he had built at San Remo in Italy. He died there on Jan. 29, 1888.
Further Reading
A complete collection of Lear's nonsense poetry, with an excellent introduction, is Holbrook Jackson, The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear (1951). Although a new edition is needed, Letters of Edward Lear (1907) and Late Letters of Edward Lear (1911), edited by Lady Strachey, are still valuable. Modern scholarship has done much to reawaken interest in the artist without diminishing the reputation of the author. For this more complete view of Lear the following works build an integrated image: Angus R. Davidson, Edward Lear, Landscape Painter and Nonsense Poet (1938); Philip Hofer, Edward Lear as a Landscape Draughtsman (1967); Vivien Noakes, Edward Lear: The Life of a Wanderer (1968).
Additional Sources
Noakes, Vivien, Edward Lear: the life of a wanderer, London: Fontana, 1979.
Lehmann, John, Edward Lear and his world, New York: Scribner, 1977.
Oxford Dictionary of British History:
Edward Lear |
Lear, Edward (1812-88). Artist. Commencing his career as an illustrator for others, particularly of birds, he depicted the earl of Derby's private menagerie at Knowsley in 1832-7, when he entertained his patron's grandchildren with humorous verses, tales, and sketches. These subsequently developed into the engaging books of nonsense for which he is today chiefly remembered. Travelling widely in Mediterranean countries, indefatigable and productive, he earned a living as a topographical landscape painter in both water-colour and oils.
Columbia Encyclopedia:
Edward Lear |
Bibliography
See biographies by A. Davidson (1938, repr. 1968), V. Noakes (1969), and P. Levi (1995); V. Noakes, ed., The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense (2001); studies by V. Dehejia (1989) and J. Wullschläger (1995).
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Edward Lear |
| Edward Lear | |
|---|---|
 Lear in 1888 |
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| Born | 12 May 1812 Holloway, Middlesex, UK |
| Died | 29 January 1888 (aged 75) Sanremo, Liguria, Italy |
| Occupation | Illustrator, Writer (poet) |
| Nationality | British |
| Ethnicity | White British |
| Citizenship | British, Italian |
| Period | 19th century |
| Genres | Children's literature |
| Literary movement | Literary nonsense |
Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was a British artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised. From childhood he suffered ill health, including epilepsy, of which he was ashamed, and depression. He travelled widely over much of his life before settling in Sanremo. He never managed to marry, though he did propose it, but he had good friends and doted on his cat. When, after a long decline in health, he died of heart disease, sadly, none of his friends was able to attend his funeral.
His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; as a (largely frustrated) illustrator of Tennyson's poems.
As an author, Lear is principally known for his popular nonsense works, rather than as a travel writer. These show a great ability to use with relish the sound of real and invented English words. He was particularly adept at surprising his readers, and, in his limericks, had a genius for doing so without resorting to shocking them.
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Lear was born into a middle-class family in the village of Holloway, the twentieth of twenty-one children (and youngest to survive) of Ann and Jeremiah Lear. He was raised by his eldest sister, also named Ann, 21 years his senior. Due to the family's failing financial fortune, at age four he and his sister had to leave the family home and set up house together. Ann doted on Edward and continued to mother him until her death, when he was almost 50 years of age.[1]
Lear suffered from health problems. From the age of six he suffered frequent grand mal epileptic seizures, and bronchitis, asthma, and in later life, partial blindness. Lear experienced his first seizure at a fair near Highgate with his father. The event scared and embarrassed him. Lear felt lifelong guilt and shame for his epileptic condition. His adult diaries indicate that he always sensed the onset of a seizure in time to remove himself from public view. How Lear was able to anticipate them is not known, but many people with epilepsy report a ringing in their ears (tinnitus) or an aura before the onset of a seizure. In Lear's time epilepsy was believed to be associated with demonic possession, which contributed to his feelings of guilt and loneliness. When Lear was about seven he began to show signs of depression, possibly due to the constant instability of his childhood. He suffered from periods of severe depression which he referred to as "the Morbids." [2]
Lear travelled widely throughout his life and eventually settled in Sanremo, on his beloved Mediterranean coast, in the 1870s, at a villa he named "Villa Tennyson." The closest he came to marriage was two proposals, both to the same woman 46 years his junior, which were not accepted. For companions he relied instead on a circle of friends and correspondents, and especially, in later life, on his Albanian Souliote chef, Giorgis, a faithful friend and, as Lear complained, a thoroughly unsatisfactory chef.[3] Another trusted companion in Sanremo was his cat, Foss, who died in 1886 and was buried with some ceremony in a garden at Villa Tennyson. After a long decline in his health, Lear died at his villa in 1888, of the heart disease from which he had suffered since at least 1870. Lear's funeral was said to be a sad, lonely affair by the wife of Dr. Hassall, Lear's physician, not one of Lear's many lifelong friends being able to attend.[4]
Lear is buried in the Foce Cemetery in Sanremo. On his headstone are inscribed these lines about Mount Tomohrit (Albania) from Tennyson's To E.L. [Edward Lear], On His Travels in Greece:
Tomohrit, Athos, all things fair.
With such a pencil, such a pen.
You shadow forth to distant men,
I read and felt that I was there.[5]
Edward Lear was known to introduce himself with his long name: "Mr Abebika kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto phashyph" or "Chakonoton the Cozovex Dossi Fossi Sini Tomentilla Coronilla Polentilla Battledore & Shuttlecock Derry down Derry Dumps" which he based on Aldiborontiphoskyphorniostikos.[6]
The centenary of his death was marked in Britain with a set of Royal Mail stamps in 1988 and an exhibition at the Royal Academy. Lear's birthplace area is now badged with a plaque at Bowman's Mews, Islington in London and his bicentenary in 2012 celebrated with a range of events, exhibitions and lectures in venues across the world including an International Owl and Pussycat Day on his birthday. On this day he was honoured by a Google Doodle depicting the Owl and the Pussycat dancing.[7]
Lear was already drawing "for bread and cheese" by the time he was aged 16 and soon developed into a serious "ornithological draughtsman" employed by the Zoological Society and then from 1832 to 1836 by the Earl of Derby, who had a private menagerie. His first publication, published when he was 19, was Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots in 1830. His paintings were well received and he was favourably compared with Audubon.
Among other trips, he visited Greece and Egypt in 1848–49, and toured the length of India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1873–75. While travelling he produced large quantities of coloured wash drawings in a distinctive style, which he worked up back in his studio into oils and watercolours, as well as prints for his books.[8] His landscape style often shows views with strong sunlight, with intense contrasts of colour.
Throughout his life he continued to paint seriously. He had a lifelong ambition to illustrate Tennyson's poems; near the end of his life a volume with a small number of illustrations was published, but his vision for the work was never realised.
In 1846 Lear published A Book of Nonsense, a volume of limericks that went through three editions and helped popularise the form. In 1865 The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple was published, and in 1867 his most famous piece of nonsense, The Owl and the Pussycat, which he wrote for the children of his patron Edward Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby. Many other works followed.
Lear's nonsense books were quite popular during his lifetime, but a rumour circulated that "Edward Lear" was merely a pseudonym, and the books' true author was the man to whom Lear had dedicated the works, his patron the Earl of Derby. Supporters of this rumour offered as evidence the facts that both men were named Edward, and that "Lear" is an anagram of "Earl".[9]
Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a poet's delight in the sounds of words, both real and imaginary. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a "diaphanous doorscraper". A "blue Boss-Woss" plunges into "a perpendicular, spicular, orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud". His heroes are Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. His most famous piece of verbal invention, a "runcible spoon" occurs in the closing lines of The Owl and the Pussycat, and is now found in many English dictionaries:
They dined on mince, and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
Though famous for his neologisms, Lear employed a number of other devices in his works in order to defy reader expectations. For example, "Cold Are The Crabs",[10] adheres to the sonnet tradition until the dramatically foreshortened last line.
Limericks are invariably typeset as four plus one lines today, but Lear's limericks were published in a variety of formats. It appears that Lear wrote them in manuscript in as many lines as there was room for beneath the picture. In the first three editions most are typeset as, respectively, two, five, and three lines. The cover of one edition[11] bears an entire limerick typeset in two lines:
There was an Old Derry down Derry, who loved to see little folks merry;
So he made them a book, and with laughter they shook at the fun of that Derry down Derry.
In Lear's limericks the first and last lines usually end with the same word rather than rhyming. For the most part they are truly nonsensical and devoid of any punch line or point. They are completely free of the off-colour humour with which the verse form is now associated. A typical thematic element is the presence of a callous and critical "they". An example of a typical Lear limerick:
There was an Old Man of Aôsta,
Who possessed a large Cow, but he lost her;
But they said, 'Don't you see,
she has rushed up a tree?
You invidious Old Man of Aôsta!'
Lear's self-portrait in verse, How Pleasant to know Mr. Lear, closes with this stanza, a reference to his own mortality:
He reads but he cannot speak Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger-beer;
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!
Five of Lear's limericks from the Book of Nonsense, in the 1946 Italian translation by Carlo Izzo, were set to music for choir a cappella by Goffredo Petrassi, in 1952.
Ara macao from his first book, 1830
Eagle Owl, Edward Lear, 1837
Another Edward Lear owl, in his more familiar style
Lear self portrait, illustrating a real incident when he encountered a stranger who claimed that "Edward Lear" was merely a pseudonym. Lear (on the right) is showing the stranger (left) the inside of his hat, with his name in the lining.
Illustration by Edward Lear for There was a Young Lady of Hull
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 | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 1994-2012 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Oxford Grove Art. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. Gale Encyclopedia of Biography. © 2006 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Oxford Dictionary of British History. A Dictionary of British History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
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