Edward Lear: a biography

by Peter Levi

First U.S. edition. Edward Lear 1812-1888 is one of those Eminent Victorians eccentric, abides in foreign parts whose existence reminds us not to take the clichés about Victorians uncritically, or at least that per dust jacket "beneath the surface of staid English culture lurked the turbulent beginnings of our own modern world." Illustrations. Bibliography, index, lurking appendices. xxii, 362 pages. quarter cloth, paper-covered boards, dust jacket.. 8vo..

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

362 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1995

About the author

Peter Chad Tigar Levi, FSA, FRSL, Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (1984–1989) was a poet, archaeologist, sometime Jesuit priest, travel writer, biographer, academic and prolific reviewer and critic.

Reviews

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was surprised to find that Edward Lear was a different generation to what I thought. He was born in 1812, the same year as Dickens. I would have thought the 1840s or even the 1850s and living into the 20thC. He seems so modern.

I had some frustration with this book because it spent a lot of time discussing his paintings and they are not shown. But the more I read the more I liked this lovely man who seemed to be lonely - no wife - with a 'deep well of sweetness'. His world of mid 19thC Greece and Southern Italy, Crete, Corfu, Palestine is all fascinating too. He is a bit too innocent to be really successful and his nonsense poems and his bird paintings were ripped off at various points of his life.

Lear himself is worth five stars as a person and as a creative artist. Levi's biography is good. My criticism is more with the edition of the book I used with its failure to reproduce the art work that was being described.