Mr Lear
A Life of Art and Nonsense
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- 15,99 €
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- 15,99 €
Publisher Description
Edward Lear's poems follow and break the rules. They abide by the logic of syntax, the linking of rhyme and the dance of rhythm, and these 'nonsenses' are full of joy - yet set against darkness. Where do these human-like animals and birds and these odd adventures - some gentle, some violent, some musical, some wild - come from? His many drawings that accompany his verse are almost hyper-real, as if he wants to free the creatures from the page. They exist nowhere else in literature, springing only from Lear's imagination.
Lear lived all his life on the borders of rules and structures, of disciplines and desires. He vowed to ignore politics yet trembled with passionate sympathies. He depended on patrons and moved in establishment circles, yet he never belonged among them and mocked imperial attitudes. He loved men yet dreamed of marriage - but remained, it seems, celibate, wrapped in himself. Even in his family he was marginal, at once accepted and rejected. Surrounded by friends, he was alone.
If we follow him across land and sea - to Italy, Greece and Albania, to The Levant and Egypt and India - and to the borderlands of spirit and self, art and desire, can we see, in the end, if the nonsense makes sense? This is what Jenny Uglow has set sail to find out.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The beauty of this hefty and hearty book is that Uglow (In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon's Wars, 1793 1815), armed with her prodigious knowledge of 19th-century England, places her subject at center stage as she follows the wandering life of Edward Lear (1812 1888) from birth to death. Lear's reputation rests primarily on his fame as a writer of whimsical nonsense verse, especially "The Owl and the Pussycat" and "The Jumblies." Uglow puts just as much effort and detail into chronicling Lear's lesser-known life as a skilled draftsman and painter, illustrated with multiple examples of his work, and as a tireless traveler in Greece, India, Italy, and Palestine, among other places, as shown in numerous passages from his journals and letters. Encyclopedic in content, Uglow's bountiful book illuminates numerous facets of Lear's life and work, touching on, among other subjects, his relationship with Alfred, Lord Tennyson as both friend and creative collaborator, and his reading of Charles Darwin's revolutionary theories (Uglow notes Lear's human characters are "curiously fluid, morphing into animals and birds, with elongated limbs, arms turning into wings, noses into beaks"). Definitive and accessible, Uglow's rich book about a richer life is thoroughly captivating fare for leisurely, curled-up reading.
