12 Feb Edward Lear

Edward Lear (1812-88) was a painter and musician of great repute. These days he’s remembered more as an author, especially for his nonsense collections of poems and songs. A Book of Nonsense (1846) is a collection of limericks, the format of which he was probably the inventor. Nonsense, Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871) includes the famous nonsense song, The Owl and the Pussycat.

Lear was an inveterate traveler, especially in Europe. His persistent ill-health caused him to spend much of his time in Italy from the 1840s onward (where he became a citizen). In the 1870s he settled in San Remo, a delightful resort on the Ligurian coast, where he built a splendid home that he named the Villa Tennyson after the great poet. He died there at the age of 75 and is buried in the local cemetery. In London Lear is commemorated by a memorial stone in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.