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Mr. Lear : a life of art and nonsense / Jenny Uglow.

by Uglow, Jenny, 1947- author.

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New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

Lear, Edward, 1812-1888.

Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography.

Artists -- Great Britain -- Biography.

9780374113339 (hardcover)

0374113335 (hardcover)

x, 598 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

First American edition.

Prologue : 'It's absurd...' -- I. Fledging. One foot off the ground ; With the girls ; 'O Sussex!' -- II. Perching. To the zoo ; Knowsley ; Tribes and species ; Make 'em laugh ; Mountains -- III. Flying. 'Rome is Rome' ; Happy as a hedgehog ; Third person ; Excursions ; Derry down Derry : Nonsense, 1846 ; 'Something is about to happen' ; 'Calmly, into the dice-box' ; 'All that amber' -- IV. Tumbling. The brotherhood ; Meeting the poet ; An owl in the desert ; Half a life : Corfu and Athos ; Bible lands ; A was an ass ; Home again, Rome again ; No more -- V. Circling. 'Overconstrained to folly' : Nonsense, 1861 ; 'Mr Lear the artist' ; 'From island unto island' ; 'What a charming life an artist's is!' ; 'The "marriage" phantasy' ; 'Gradually extinguified' -- VI. Calling. Sail away : Cannes, 1868-1869 ; 'Three groans for Corsica!' ; Degli inglesi ; Nonsense songs and More nonsense ; Restless in San Remo ; India ; Families ; Laughable lyrics -- VII. Swooping. Shocks ; The Villa Tennyson ; 'As great a fool as ever I was' ; Pax vobiscum'.

"Edward Lear, the renowned English artist, musician, author, and poet, lived a vivid, fascinating life, but confessed, "I hardly enjoy any one thing on earth while it is present." He was a man in a hurry, "running about on railroads" from London to country estates and boarding steamships to Italy, Corfu, India, and Palestine. He is still loved for his "nonsenses," from startling, joyous limericks to great love poems like "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" and "The Dong with a Luminous Nose," and he is famous, too, for his brilliant natural history paintings, landscapes, and travel writing. But although Lear belongs solidly to the age of Darwin and Dickens--he gave Queen Victoria drawing lessons, and his many friends included Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelite painters--his genius for the absurd and his dazzling wordplay make him a very modern spirit. He speaks to us today. Lear was a man of great simplicity and charm--children adored him--yet his humor masked epilepsy, depression, and loneliness. Jenny Uglow's beautifully illustrated biography, full of the color of the age, brings us his swooping moods, passionate friendships, and restless travels. Above all, Mr. Lear shows how this uniquely gifted man lived all his life on the boundaries of rules and structures, disciplines and desires--an exile of the heart."--Dust jacket.

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