by Julio

    Edward Lear was born in 1812 in London, England. He was the twentieth child in his family, the Lears. Imagine how the mother felt! She could barely even give her children Christmas presents or presents on their birthdays! What if they got in a fight? Would anything stop them? It would be like a stampede. If I were the mother of a family like that, I would probably go mad.

     Edward Lear had a hard life. When he was four, his father went bankrupt and was put in debtor’s prison because he borrowed money for the stock market and couldn’t pay it back. He borrowed money because his twenty children cost too much to support. After that, his mother finally gave up and gave Edward Lear to his twenty-five-year-old sister, Ann.

    He had many problems. First of all, he had epilepsy, which makes you sometimes have violent twitches on the floor. Back in those days, people made fun of epileptics, and called epilepsy "the demon sickness.’’ Unlike today, when Edward Lear had epilepsy, no one could treat it. Second, he was manic-depressive. This means that someone has mood swings for no reason whatsoever.

    When he was fifteen, he started working as an artist. Then, when he was nineteen, he was hired by the London Zoo to draw pictures of birds that were the first color pictures in books in all of Great Britain. After that, a British nobleman named Lord Stanley hired him to draw pictures of his animals at his private zoo. Lear lived in Stanley’s house for five years.  (You will be able to see his pictures below.)

     While Edward lived there, he began writing and illustrating limericks and nonsense rhymes for Stanley’s children. When Edward was thirty-four years old, he published his first book, A Book of Nonsense. Next, he wrote many more books, and illustrated many more pictures.  His most famous book was called The Owl and the Pussycat.  He was known for drawing silly cartoons. He was a nice, generous, and friendly man.

    Edward Lear traveled around the world and wrote stories about his trips. He also drew pictures of the landscapes around him. He was famous for that. Edward Lear kicked the bucket in 1888, in San Remo.