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Definition: Edward Lear |
Edward LearNoun1. British artist and writer of nonsense verse (1812-1888). Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Synonym: Edward LearSynonym: Lear (n). (additional references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Eagle Owl, Edward Lear, 1837
Another Edward Lear owl, in his more familiar style
Edward Lear (1812 - 1888) was an artist, illustrator and writer, well known for his nonsensical poetry and limericks, which he popularised. He was born in London and was the twentieth child of his parents. He started work as an serious illustrator, and his first publication, at the age of nineteen, was Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots in 1830. His paintings were well received and he was favorably compared with Audubon. Throughout his life he continued to paint seriously. He cherished a lifelong ambition to illustrate Tennyson's poems, which was never properly realized.
Edward Lear was plagued by epilepsy, suffering frequent grand mal seizures; he also suffered from bronchitis, asthma, and partial blindness.
In 1846, he published A Book of Nonsense, a volume of limericks which helped to popularize the form and which went through three editions. In 1865 The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple was published and in 1867, his most famous piece of nonsense, The Owl and the Pussycat which he wrote for the children of his patron Edward Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby. Many other works followed.
Edward Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a delight in the sounds of words, both real and invented. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a "diaphanous doorscraper." A "blue Boss-Woss" plunges into "a perpendicular, spicular, orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud." His heros are Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. His most famous piece of verbal invention occurs in the closing lines of The Owl and the Pussycat:
Edward Lear's limericks are written as four lines rather than five, with an internal rhyme in the fourth line. The first and last lines usually end with the same word, rather than rhyming. For the most part, they are truly nonsensical and devoid of any punch line or point; there is nothing in them to "get." And, of course, they are completely free of the off-color humor with which the verse form is now associated. A typical thematic element is the presence of a callous and critical "they." An example of a typical Lear limerick:
Lear's writing
They dined on mince, and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.The "runcible spoon," a Lear coinage, entered the language and is now found in every dictionary.There was an Old Man of Aôsta,
Who possessed a large Cow, but he lost her;
But they said, 'Don't you see, she has rushed up a tree?
You invidious Old Man of Aôsta!'
It is interesting to compare those two Victorian masters of nonsense, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll's "nonsense" is a reversal or parody of ordinary logic. He plays on the meaning of words, and his writing style itself is prosaic. Edward Lear's "nonsense" is an true absence of logic; he plays on the sound of words; and his writing style is poetic. Among Lear's tremble-bembles and the chippy-wippy-sikki-tees can be found some very felicitous turns of phrase. Lear's self-portrait in verse, How Pleasant to know Mr. Lear, closes with the stanza:He reads but he cannot speak Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger-beer;
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!
"Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish" must surely be one of the most pleasant references to mortality ever coined.
External link
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Edward Lear."
Crosswords: Edward Lear |
| English words defined with "Edward Lear": runcible spoon. (references) |
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
edward lear | 54 |
edward lear hotel | 7 |
edward lear limericks | 3 |
biography edward lear | 3 |
edward lear poem | 3 |
edward lear owl and the pussy cat | 3 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "edward lear"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Pig Latin | edwarday earlay.(various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-d-d-e-e-l-r-r-w" | |
-2 letters: rewarded. | |
-3 letters: awarded, awardee, awarder, dawdler, drawled, drawler, leeward, redware, waddler. | |
-4 letters: daedal, dawdle, deader, dealer, dearer, delead, drawee, drawer, ladder, larded, larder, leaded, leader, lewder, raddle, reader, realer, reared, redder, reddle, redear, redraw, redrew, reread, reward, reweld, wadder, waddle, warded, warder, warred, wearer, wedder, welded, welder. | |
-5 letters: adder, addle, alder, areae, areal, award, aware, dared, darer, dawed, dedal, deled, dewar, dewed, drawl, dread, drear, dreed, eared, elder, erred, laded, lader, laree, lawed, radar, rared, rawer, readd, reded, rewed, waded, wader, waled, waler, wared, weald, wedel. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)45 64 77 61 72 64 4C 65 61 72 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
|
Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000101 01100100 01110111 01100001 01110010 01100100 00100000 01001100 01100101 01100001 01110010 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)E d w a r d   L e a r |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0045 0064 0077 0061 0072 0064 004C 0065 0061 0072 |
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)397089678470246716784 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Expressions: Internet 6. Translations: Modern 7. Anagrams 8. Orthography | 9. Bibliography |
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