Lear, EDWARD

Lear, EDWARD, author of the inimitable Book of Nonsense, was born at Holloway, London, 12th May 1812. From his boyhood he had a passion for painting, and from the age of fifteen he had to make his own living. Later he was sent by the Earl of Derby to Italy and Greece, where he painted many landscapes in Albania, Athos, the Morea, and the islands of the Ægean. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1850 until 1873. His later years were spent in Italy, and at San Remo he died, January 30, 1888. Lear made himself better known by his illustrated books of travels than by his paintings. Of these the most important were his Sketches of Rome and its Environs (1842); Illustrated Excursions in Italy (1846); Journal in Greece and Albania (1851), which called forth the praises of Tennyson in a well-known poem—'I read and felt that I was there; ' Journal of a Landscape Painter in Calabria (1852); In Corsica (1869). The Book of Nonsense (1846; 25th ed. 1888) went at once to the heart of all English children. The extraordinary facility and felicity of the rhymes, and the high level of humour, wit, and good sense, maintained throughout, have kept for it its place in popular favour. More Nonsense Rhymes followed in 1871; Nonsense Songs, Stories, and Botany in 1870; Laughable Lyrics in 1876.