I was surprised to learn a few days ago that the coming year is the bicentenary of Edward Lear. Like his fellow bicentenarian Dickens he had a father arrested for debt and a mother who neglected him (from an early age he was brought up by a sister over 20 years older than him) and like Dickens became an inveterate traveller - the very good biography of Lear by Vivien Noakes is subtitled The Life of a Wanderer.
Lear was multi-talented, starting off in life as an ornithological draughtsman, specialising in parrots, and after he became famous as a writer of illustrated nonsense books he concentrated on landscape painting mainly in the Mediterranean countries (and India) where he spent much of his later life. It would be good if an exhibition of his ornithological and landscape work could be mounted in his bicentenary year.
I vividly remember as a child reading Lear's nonsense books, especially an old one with coloured illustrations of the Nonsense Alphabet. Some of the nonsense songs were (are?) disturbing, such as the The Dong With a Luminous Nose, which starts: "When awful darkness and silence reign/Over the great Gromboolian plain". I loved the made up names, especially of creatures, such as the Nupiter Piffkin and the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò (I still wonder what 'runcible' means - it seems to be one of those Humpty-Dumpty words that Lear resorted to when he felt like it). Rereading some of the Nonsense work, I get the impression that Lear took an almost physical pleasure in the sounds of the words and that he felt that if he took care of the sounds, the sense would take care of itself.
My favourites from Lear's Nonsense work are:
How pleasant to know Mr Lear
The Owl and the Pussycat
The Nutcracker and the Sugar-tongs
The Dong With a Luminous Nose
The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò (with optional music accompaniment)
Mr and Mrs Discobbolos
The Nonsense Alphabet (the one with the boy falling down at the start)
The Akond of Swat
Incidents in the Life of My Uncle Arly
Lear was multi-talented, starting off in life as an ornithological draughtsman, specialising in parrots, and after he became famous as a writer of illustrated nonsense books he concentrated on landscape painting mainly in the Mediterranean countries (and India) where he spent much of his later life. It would be good if an exhibition of his ornithological and landscape work could be mounted in his bicentenary year.
I vividly remember as a child reading Lear's nonsense books, especially an old one with coloured illustrations of the Nonsense Alphabet. Some of the nonsense songs were (are?) disturbing, such as the The Dong With a Luminous Nose, which starts: "When awful darkness and silence reign/Over the great Gromboolian plain". I loved the made up names, especially of creatures, such as the Nupiter Piffkin and the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò (I still wonder what 'runcible' means - it seems to be one of those Humpty-Dumpty words that Lear resorted to when he felt like it). Rereading some of the Nonsense work, I get the impression that Lear took an almost physical pleasure in the sounds of the words and that he felt that if he took care of the sounds, the sense would take care of itself.
My favourites from Lear's Nonsense work are:
How pleasant to know Mr Lear
The Owl and the Pussycat
The Nutcracker and the Sugar-tongs
The Dong With a Luminous Nose
The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò (with optional music accompaniment)
Mr and Mrs Discobbolos
The Nonsense Alphabet (the one with the boy falling down at the start)
The Akond of Swat
Incidents in the Life of My Uncle Arly
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