Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Inventing Edward Lear
Author: LODGE SARA
Format: HARDCOVER
Publication date: 15/01/2019
Imprint: HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Price: $54.00
Publishing status: NOT YET PUBLISHED
A compelling account of one of the most colorful and influential figures of the Victorian age.
Edward Lear wrote some of the best-loved poems in English, including The Owl and the Pussycat but the father of nonsense was far more than a poet. He was a naturalist, a brilliant landscape painter, an experimental travel writer, and an accomplished composer. Sara Lodge presents the fullest account yet of Lears passionate engagement in the intellectual, social, and cultural life of his times.
Lear had a difficult start in life. He was epileptic, asthmatic, and depressive, but even as a child a consummate performer who projected himself into others affections. He became, by John James Audubons estimate, one of the greatest ornithological artists of the age. Queen Victoriaan admirerchose him to be her painting teacher. He popularized the limerick, set Tennysons verse to music, and opened fresh doors for children and adults to share fantasies of magical escape. Lodge draws on diaries, letters, and new archival sources to paint a vivid picture of Lear that explores his musical influences, his religious nonconformity, his relationship with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and the connections between his scientific and artistic work. He invented himself as a character: awkward but funny, absurdly sympathetic. In Lodges hands, Lear emerges as a dynamic and irreverent polymath whose conversation continues to draw us in.
Inventing Edward Lear is an original and moving account of one of the most intriguing and creative of all Victorians.
ISBN: 9780674971158
Pages: 448