Edward Lear

Edward Lear (1812-1888) was a prolific artist, writer and musician. He published very popular books of nonsense poetry and prose, and was particularly noted for his limericks. He illustrated poetry by Tennyson and set some of Tennyson’s poems to music.

Knowing Edward Lear (https://www.knowingedwardlear.com/) is a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Oxford University. The research is founded on collaborations with a range of organisations, including the BBC, Harvard University, the Ashmolean Museum, the British Academy, the Natural History Museum, and the Tennyson Society. The project seeks to examine Lear’s nonsense writing alongside his natural history drawings, landscape paintings, travel books, correspondence, and diaries. It studies his achievement in relation to a broad range of scientific, religious, socio-political and cultural contexts, and it also aims to explore his legacy, from the beginnings of the modernist experiment to the present moment — roughly, from T. S. Eliot’s comment to Stravinsky that Lear should be read alongside Mallarmé, to John Ashbery’s claim that Lear was his ‘all-time favourite poet’.