Edward Lear in Greece: Journals of a Landscape Painter in Greece and Albania

by Edward Lear

with 20 litographs by Edward Lear

Genres: Travel, History

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.
His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to make illustrations of birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems.
As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edward Lear, a sick man, left Salonika in 1848 in order to visit what is now known as Albania. His aim was to explore and to sketch. This book is his daily journal. A great artist, he writes descriptions that come to life as much as his excellent sketches. Defying unbelievable physical discomforts, Lear visited parts of Albania that had hardly ever been visited by western Europeans apart from Lord Byron and several other intrepid explorers. Lear's prose is not only beautiful but also streaked with compassionate humour.

I have written this short review to encourage others to read this superb travel book. In the future, I plan to write at greater length about how the Albania of today compares with what Lear discovered in 1848 and '49.

This is a book that should interest anyone interested in the Balkans and anyone with an appetite for good writing.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book after Muir and Fremont was fascinating. I really appreciated the landscape artist's perspective on travel and exploration. In addition to the prints of his work included in the book, Lear's written observations described the environment well, within the lens of his perspective. I was transported to another time and place, one that is largely lost to the history I've learned, which is exactly what I'm looking for.