Edward Lear

British writer, poet and landscape painter famed for light verse, nonsense poetry and limericks. His poem "Owl and the Pussycat" became a children's classic, although serious critics place him with the romantic school of poetry. The youngest and 21st child of a stockbroker, he was forced to earn a living by drawing from the age of 15. While working for the London Zoo, 1832, he produced the "Illustrations of the Family of the Psittacidae," and met the earl of Derby, Edward Stanley, who engaged him to draw his menagerie at Knowsley Hall for four years. This is where he started his nonsense rhymes to entertain the earl's children and eventually brought him great popularity with the publication of "Book of Nonsense.") Lear's youthful drawing of a leopard has been compared to Blake's "Tyger" and his bird drawings compare favorably with Audubon's. Many consider his landscapes as being in a class with Turner's and his poetry as original as Tennyson's with the wit of Jane Austin. Lear's diaries reveal that he had his share of loneliness, moodiness and fussiness with a trace of depression. Prone to epileptic seizures, he had enough prior warning to "melt away" from company allowing himself the dignity of being defined through his work and friendships, rather than personal moods and sorrows. Some biographers hint that Lear might have been homosexual due to a suspicious-sounding childhood trauma. Due to it Lear was left with an enigmatic lifelong complaint against a cousin who "did the greatest evil done to me in life." He had trained his wonderful imagination on the outside world - its amazing birds, bugs, furry animals and plants, and the beauties, strangeness and odd discomfort of foreign societies. He died on 29 January 1888 in San Remo, Italy. Link to Wikipedia biography