Edward Lear in Southern Italy

by Edward Lear, Peter Quennell (Editor)

, 212 pages, 20 lithographic plates and 2 maps by Lear

212 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1964

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

[Bob Schnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before he published his books of nonsense, Edward Lear was better known for his travel books with lithographs of his landscapes. "Edward Lear in Southern Italy"(1847) seems to be the best regarded as he encountered a small anti-government revolution while there and his lithograph of Melfi is perhaps the last look before it was destroyed in a massive earthquake 4 years later. Overall though, not much of his humor shines through and there's a lot of complaining about bad accommodations and boring stretches of road between villages. For more entertaining travelogues from the 1800's, stick with Mark Twain.