Edward Lear – The Life of a Wanderer by Vivien Noakes – First Edition, 1968

Description The Details:This copy is in good condition. Boards are excellent. Mild foxing on end pages. Dust jacket in good condition. Normal shelf wear, unclipped. The Story:Edward Lear is famous as the author of “A Book of Nonsense” and of the timeless children’s songs, “The Owl and the Pussycat” and “The Jumblies”. Yet, for this gentle genius, infectious merriment mingled with a deep sadness. Who is the man behind the nonsense? Born the twentieth of twenty-one children, he was rejected by his mother and brought up by his eldest sister. Almost entirely self-taught, at the age of nineteen Lear published “Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots”, one the finest books of ornithological illustration ever produced. Then, at the age of twenty-five, he turned his back on this early success to become a traveller and landscape painter. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, he is now considered to be one of the finest painters of the Victoria age. Always an outsider, yet at ease with the noblest in the land, Lear was a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites and of Tennyson, and was drawing master to Queen Victoria. (GoodReads) The Author:Vivien Noakes (née Langley; 16 February 1937 – 17 February 2011) was a British biographer, editor and critic, an expert on Edward Lear and the literature of the First World War. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Related