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Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense

Acclaimed historian Jenny Uglow brings us a fascinating and beautifully illustrated biography of Edward Lear, full of the colour of the age.Edward Lear lived a vivid, fascinating, energetic 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 songs 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 in 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 word-play 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 humour masked epilepsy, depression and loneliness. Jenny Uglow`s beautifully illustrated biography, full of the colour of the age, brings us his swooping moods, passionate friendships and restless travels/ Above all it 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.

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