May 12: Edward Lear

Born this date in 1812 was Edward Lear, English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet known for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose he made limericks popular. His most famous poem is The Owl and the Pussycat. Here are some things you might not know about Edward Lear.

1. He was born in Holloway, London. His father was a stockbroker. He was the penultimate of twenty-one children.
2. He was brought up by his eldest sister from the age of four - she was 21 years older than him. Reduced financial circumstances forced his sister to leave the family home and take Edward with her.
3. He didn't enjoy good health. He suffered frequent grand mal epileptic seizures from the age of six. He was ashamed and embarrassed by his illness, but learned to recognise when he was about to have a seizure and would remove himself from public view. He also suffered from bronchitis, asthma, depression and later in his life, partial blindness.
4. He wasn't just a poet. He was an artist, too, drawing to make a living by the age of 16. He worked for the Zoological Society and then for the Earl of Derby, who kept a private menagerie. He specialised in painting birds and was the first major bird artist to draw birds from real live birds, instead of just their skins. His first book, published when he was 19, wasn't a book of poems but a book of pictures - of parrots.
5. He was also a musician. Lear played the Accordion, flute, and Guitar, but primarily the piano. He was a composer - he used to set poems to music. Lear's were the only musical settings of his poems that Tennyson approved of. Lear never played professionally, but would entertain fellow guests at parties with his compositions.
6. Lear's first book of nonsense poetry was published in 1846, A Book of Nonsense, a volume of limericks. His famous poem, The Owl and the Pussycat, was published as part of a collection called Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets in 1871.
7. The poem contains the line "They ate with a runcible spoon". The word runcible was completely made up by Edward Lear, who never defined what it meant. Scholars and dictionaries have tried to define what a runcible spoon is, usually suggesting it is a spoon with tines or a sharp edge. In Lear's drawings, however, it looks more like a ladle. Those who tried to define the word had possibly not read some of Lear's other works, in which he mentions a "runcible cat", a "runcible goose" and a "runcible wall".
8. He gave himself a couple of nonsense pseudonyms: "Mr Abebika kratoponoko Prizzikalo Kattefello Ablegorabalus Ableborinto phashyph" and "Chakonoton the Cozovex Dossi Fossi Sini Tomentilla Coronilla Polentilla Battledore & Shuttlecock Derry down Derry Dumps".
9. He was working on a sequel poem to The Owl and the Pussycat when he died. The unfinished poem is called The Children of the Owl and the Pussycat - somehow a bird and a cat managed to breed a family of hybrids who liked to eat mice. It's not a particularly jolly tale - the pussycat died from falling out of a tall tree so the Owl had to bring them up alone, and the money had all been spent. Beatrix Potter wrote a prequel, The Tale of Little Pig Robinson, telling the background story of the Pig with the ring in its nose.
10. Inscribed on Lear's headstone are the words "all things fair; With such a pencil, such a pen; You shadow'd forth to distant men; I read and felt that I was there." The words are from a poem by Tennyson.

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