Edward Lear. Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, now known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.
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 illustrator of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes, and alphabets.
He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry. Lear was born into a middle-class family at Holloway, North London, the penultimate of 21 children of Ann Clark Skerrett and Jeremiah Lear, a stockbroker formerly working for the family sugar refining business.
He was raised by his eldest sister, also named Ann, 21 years his senior. Jeremiah Lear ended up defaulting to the London Stock Exchange in the economic upheaval following the Napoleonic Wars; owing to the family's now more limited finances, Lear and his sister were required to leave the family home, Bowmans Lodge, and live together when he was aged four.
Ann doted on Edward and continued to act as a mother for him until her death, when he was almost 50 years of age. Lear suffered from
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 illustrator of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes, and alphabets.
He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry. Lear was born into a middle-class family at Holloway, North London, the penultimate of 21 children of Ann Clark Skerrett and Jeremiah Lear, a stockbroker formerly working for the family sugar refining business.
He was raised by his eldest sister, also named Ann, 21 years his senior. Jeremiah Lear ended up defaulting to the London Stock Exchange in the economic upheaval following the Napoleonic Wars; owing to the family's now more limited finances, Lear and his sister were required to leave the family home, Bowmans Lodge, and live together when he was aged four.
Ann doted on Edward and continued to act as a mother for him until her death, when he was almost 50 years of age. Lear suffered from
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