Edward Lear

Edward Lear (1812–1888) was an English artist, traveler and writer of nonsense. The twentieth of twenty-one children of a London stockbroker, epileptic and short-sighted, he earned his living from his teens as a natural history illustrator, and his folio of parrots, published when he was twenty, led to work for the Earl of Derby at Knowsley, where he began drawing nonsense for the children. A Book of Nonsense (1846) was followed by Nonsense Songs, More Nonsense and Laughable Lyrics, with "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" and "The Jumblies." He traveled and painted landscapes in Italy, Greece, Albania, Egypt and India and settled at San Remo with his cat Foss.