Edward Lear

Life

Edward Lear was born in London in 1812 and died in San Remo (Italy) in 1888. He was the youngest son of Ann Skerrett and Jeremiah Lear, a middle-class family. When his father, a stockbroker, got into financial trouble his older sister Ann took on the mother's role and raised him. Lear early showed a talent for painting and drawing. Therefore he dedicated himself to draw illustrations for natural history books.In 1832 the Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidaewas published. A collection of coloured lithographies of parrots. Due to his paintings Edward Stanley, the later 13th Earl of Derby, engaged him as an animal painter at his estate. Later on, when his eyesight got worse, Lear traveled to Rome to do a painting course and to achieve reputation as a landscape painter. However, with his paintings he never had the success he hoped for. Though, he published a collection of some of his limericks(poems with a certain rhyme scheme and humorous intent in which the characters always behave according to the rules of "nonsense")which he originally wrote to entertain the children and later also the adults at Edward Stanley's estate. He published his nonsense verses with his own illustrations in A Book of Nonsense(1846),one of his most important works. Besides his poems he wrote some travel books on Italy (1846-75) and other countries he visited as a lonely traveler, e.g Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania (1851). Although having loyal friendships, amongst others with Alfred Tennyson, Edward Lear often felt isolated and unhappy since he was rejected by the ones he really loved. His emotions are reflected in some of his poems, in which the characters also suffer from loss and isolation from society.

Nonsense poetry

Although Edward Lear wished to become famous for his paintings rather than for his nonsense poetry, he is still today associated with a special type of poetry: the limericks. This special verse form is characterized by its close structure. The final word of the first line was repeated at the end of the last line. The typical rhyme scheme is aabba. The characters of limericks are individuals who can be young or old, male or female. But they always show some peculiar idiosyncrasy(concerning their behaviour or appearance) which distinguishes them from the rest of the society."In its most typical form it announces the existence of the eccentric, notes his dwelling place, and describes his distinctive features; then it explains the consequences of his peculiarity and concludes with an apostrophe."(http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/edward-lear

              There was an Old Man with a gong,                       
              Who bumped at it all the day long;
              But they called out, "O law!
              You're a horrid old bore!"
              So they smashed that Old Man with a gong.
             [1]

              There was an Old Person whose habits,
              Induced him to feed upon Rabbits;
              When he'd eaten eighteen,
              He turned perfectly green,
              Upon which he relinquished those habits.[ebd.]

In his limericks Lear often broaches the issue of bad eating habits which finally lead to the punishment of the character. He also parodies himself in a certain manner by writing limericks about people with huge noses and long legs which he certainly had. In his later career as a writer Lear wrote longer poems, published in Nonsense Songs (1870). One of the most familiar poems is The Owl and the Pussy-cat. In these poems there are no human protagonists and Lear usually invented nonsense creatures or unreal places with funny names. Other representatives of nonsense literature in a similar manner were Lewis Carroll and Thomas Hood.

Today one can find a collection of Edward Lear's verses and tales in The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense(Penguin,2002).

Sources

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/982/982-h/982-h.htm http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/edward-lear

Coote, Stephen: The Penguin Short History of English Literature.Harmondsworth:Penguin Books,1993. Nowak, Helge: Literature in Britain and Ireland.A History.Tübingen:Francke,2010. The Cambridge History of English Poetry.Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press,2010.