Edward Lear is famous as the author of A Book of Nonsense and the timeless children's songs, 'The Owl and the Pussy-cat' and 'The Jumblies'. But who is the man behind the nonsense? Born the twentieth of twenty-one children and rejected by his mother, from childhood he was dogged by epilepsy and depression. Children loved him, but friends observed 'a gentle sadness through which his humour shone'. At the age of nineteen he published one of the finest books of ornithological illustration ever produced, but six years later he turned his back on this early success to become a traveller and landscape painter. Largely unrecognised in his lifetime, he is now considered to be one of the finest painters of the Victorian age.
This new edition of Vivien Noakes' highly acclaimed biography, which is completely revised using hitherto unknown material, is both poignant and hugely uplifting.
