That Singular Person Called Lear by Susan Chitty - 1988

London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. h/b 305 pages, condition is very good, this is an ex library book with the usual stamps. This important new biography of Edward Lear, painter and poet, is the first serious work for twenty years and marks the centenary of his death in 1888. Lear, who was born in 1812, the twentieth child of a stockbroker in Holloway, never achieved great fame or success in his lifetime, yet left behind a legacy of thousands of drawings and water-colours. His name is now virtually a household word, known to all as the author of 'The Owl and the Pussy-cat' and other Nonsense rhymes. Epilepsy caused Lear literally to see a different world from other people, and in this book Susan Chitty penetrates the complicated and fascinating psychology of a Victorian homosexual, who found happiness of a kind at the age of twenty-five when he went to live in Italy, and then lost it during a subsequent sojourn in Corfu. He became a perpetual traveller - to Egypt, Palestine, Corsica, Albania, India, returning often to Corfu, and to England. Lear strained throughout his life to paint the gigantic landscapes for which the aristocracy would pay gigantic prices. But they preferred his limericks. If love and a settled home life eluded him, Lear made some deep and lasting friendships, with people like Holman Hunt, Emily Tennyson and Chichester Fortescue, with whom he corresponded until the end of his life. He even made several half-hearted attempts to marry, but in the end Lear's sole companions were Giorgio his fatithful Suliote servant, and Foss the cat.