Lear's nonsense books were quite popular during his lifetime, but a rumour developed that "Edward Lear" was merely a pseudonym, and the books' true author was the man to whom Lear had dedicated the works, his patron the Earl of Derby. Promoters of this rumour offered as evidence that both men were named Edward, and that "Lear" is an anagram of "Earl". [24] The falls of the Kalama, Albania 1851 In 2012, I was involved in organizing in Corfu a bicentenary exhibition of his works. At the same time, we commissioned a bronze bust of Lear is put in position at the Reading Room in Corfu in May 2014. Following on the success of this well-received exhibition, I realized speaking with Spiro Flamburiari that no one had ever created an Edward Lear Society, which we began to work on. So finally we are really there, supported by the many luminaries in their various expert fields covering all interests held by Edward Lear. But when he found the time to choose his own subjects, he often made his way to London’s Zoological Gardens. A relatively new experiment by the city’s Zoological Society, the Gardens were dedicated to scientific study, and were filled with creatures imported from all corners of the British Empire. While many artists of the time relied on taxidermied specimens—which, after all, were better at staying still—Lear preferred drawing live animals, and was known to occasionally enter their cages, so as to get a better look. A hooded parakeet, drawn from life. University of Wisconsin Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture/Public Domain James Williams (University of Cambridge) (20 July 2004). "Literary Encyclopedia | Edward Lear". Litencyc.com . Retrieved 28 January 2014. For an artist to excel in portraying the particular physical characteristics of a creature with scientific accuracy, while simultaneously conveying the character and temperament of a living creature is such a “rare skill”, Attenborough writes, that Edward Lear may “fairly be accounted one of the greatest of all natural history painters”.

Roger F. Pastier & John Farrand, Jr., Masterpieces of Bird Art, 700 Years of Ornithological Illustration, pp. 122–123, Abbeville Press, New York, 1991, ISBN 1-55859-134-6 Illustrations of Ornithology, Vol. 1 Sir William Jardine and Prideaux John Selby W.H. Lizars / Longman, Orme, Brown & Green / S. Highley Michael Morpurgo began writing stories in the early '70's, in response to the children in his class at the primary school where he taught in Kent. One of the UK’s best-loved authors and storytellers, Michael was appointed Children’s Laureate in 2003. He has written over 130 books, including The Butterfly Lion, Kensuke’s Kingdom, Why the Whales Came, The Mozart Question, Shadow, and War Horse, which was adapted for a hugely successful stage production by the National Theatre and then, in 2011, for a film directed by Steven Spielberg. His book, Private Peaceful has been adapted for the stage by Simon Reade and has now been made into a film, directed by Pat O'Connor. Michael was awarded the OBE for his writing in 2006. Lear did not have any new nonsense published for 15 years following the appearance of A Book of Nonsense. In 1861, however, a new, expanded edition was brought out under his own name. Its enthusiastic reception gratified but also perplexed Lear, who always hoped to gain fame as a painter and regarded nonsense only as a source of fun and money. His success as a poet did encourage him to compose more complex nonsenses, which appeared in three volumes during the 1870s after he had settled in San Remo, Italy. But before he began bringing these impossibilities to life, Lear had a different focus: he drew parrots. When he was young, Lear was employed as an ornithological illustrator, and he spent years learning to draw birds, favoring live models in an era when most worked from taxidermy. Before he turned 20, he’d published Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots, a critical success, and the first monograph produced in England to focus on a single family of birds. A pair of Kohl’s parakeets, as drawn by Lear. University of Wisconsin Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture/Public DomainLear had lifelong health problems. From the age of six he had frequent grand mal epileptic seizures, bronchitis, asthma and, during later life, partial blindness. Lear experienced his first seizure at a fair near Highgate with his father. The event scared and embarrassed him. Lear felt lifelong guilt and shame for his epileptic condition. His adult diaries indicate that he always sensed the onset of a seizure in time to remove himself from public view. When Lear was about seven years old he began to show signs of depression, possibly due to the instability of his childhood. He had periods of severe melancholia which he referred to as "the Morbids". [8] Artist [ edit ] Masada on the Dead Sea, Edward Lear, 1858 Derek E. Johns THE EDWARD LEAR SOCIETY ADVISORY COUNCIL Founders Count Spiro Flamburiari & Derek Johns Advisory Council Noakes, Vivien. "Lear, Edward (1812–1888)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/16247. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Lear was a wandering nonsense minstrel, never completely free of physical and emotional pain. His health steadily deteriorated until he died, alone except for a servant, on January 29, 1888. His last words expressed gratitude for the kindnesses of all his absent friends. John Dryden studied for a BA Hons in Fine Art and has over 40 years professional experience as an actor and theatre director, working in London's West end and in the major cities of Great Britain. He has appeared on television in many varied programmes and has taught Theatre studies in some of the top Drama Colleges. John has toured many developing countries under the auspices of the British Council presenting excerpts from some of the best plays in the English language. John was Head of School of Performing Arts at Chichester prior to moving to Corfu 10 years ago.

He subsequently published Lear’s Italy in 2005 describing Lear’s travels in his adopted homeland where he was often the first Englishman that had ever been seen in some of the remoter areas, once being arrested in mistake for Lord Palmerston who was a vocal critic of the Papal regime. In 2012 he published his biography The Owl and the Pussy Cats: Lear in Love, the Untold Story, which demolishes the theory sometimes voiced that because he never married, Lear must have been homosexual, and shows that in fact nothing could have been further from the truth: ‘I wish to goodness I could get a wife,’ Lear had written to Ann from Rome, and almost at the end of his life had bemoaned ‘the women I have missed.’ He has now completed a screenplay under the same title.That friend, of 30 years standing, was Attenborough: “I was at his house for dinner and I said ‘That’s the most beautiful painting of a possum I’ve ever seen. Who did it?’ And he said it was Edward Lear, and that nobody knows he was also an amazing and very important painter in natural history subjects. The closest he came to marriage was two proposals, both to the same woman 46 years his junior, which were not accepted. For companions, he relied instead on friends and correspondents, and especially, during later life, on his Albanian Souliote chef, Giorgis, a faithful friend and (as Lear complained) a thoroughly unsatisfactory chef. [19] Another trusted companion in San Remo was his cat, Foss, who died in 1887 and was buried with some ceremony in a garden at Villa Tennyson. A selection of illustrations of owls by five of the most famous bird artists from the archive of the Natural History Museum in London. The artists represented are John Gould, Edward Lear, Alexander Wilson, John James Audubon and Archibald Thorburn.