Victorian Literature by Victor Shea & William Whitla

Author:Victor Shea & William Whitla
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118329023
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2014-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Edward Lear (1812–88)

Born in Highgate near London, Lear was the twentieth of twenty-one children, and was largely raised by his oldest sister Ann when his stockbroker father went bankrupt. Afflicted with epilepsy, asthma, and bouts of depression, he moved with Ann into London (1827) and helped support them by selling his drawings, some to the British Museum. By 1829 he was drawing at the newly opened Regent’s Park Zoo and in 1830 began work on his Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidæ or Parrots (1830), the first ever elephant folio book of multicoloured lithographs it established his reputation at the age of 19 and was one of the greatest accomplishments of nineteenth-century publishing. Hired by Lord Stanley (1775–1851), heir to the earl of Derby, to record his menagerie at Knowsley near Liverpool, Lear was supported well and made connections that helped him for the rest of his life. For Stanley’s children he wrote A Book of Nonsense (1846), a collection of limericks (he popularized the form) with clever illustrations. He often exploited rhymes that drew on working-class accents, as in Sparta / daughter (Sparter / dorter) and caricatures that developed metonymic associations (the nose for the whole person), or even cruel or violent eccentricities. In 1846 he gave drawing lessons to Queen Victoria, who had been impressed by his Views in Rome and its Environs (1841) and Illustrated Excursions in Italy (1846). After 1837 he left England to study art in Rome, returning only occasionally. He travelled widely – touring, not once, but a number of times, throughout Italy, Sicily, Malta, Corfu, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Palestine as well as going to India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) – and often dangerously, especially for a man in somewhat frail health. He kept careful journals, and recording his travels with numerous watercolours, until his death at San Remo in January, 1888. His original nonsense book went through several dozen editions, and as well he published Nonsense Songs and Stories (1871), More Nonsense Songs, Pictures, &c. (1872), Laughable Lyrics (1877), and Nonsense Botany and Nonsense Alphabets. Standard edition: The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense, ed. Vivien Noakes (2001); Selected Letters, ed. Vivien Noakes (1988); Peter Levi, Edward Lear: A Biography (1995). Nonsense books at the Baldwin Library: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/?c=juv&m=hrat&t=lear,%20edward,,,&f=AU,+TX,+FC,+TI.

Nonsense books: http://www.bencourtney.com/ebooks/lear/; Illustrations of Parrots: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/DLDecArts/DLDecArts-idx?id=DLDecArts.LearParrots

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