I’ve always adored the poetry and wit of Edward Lear and
used to love reading them to my children when they were very young. His own
life was often very sad. He was the penultimate of twenty one children and
brought up by his sister who was twenty one years his senior. Poor Edward
suffered from epilepsy, partial blindness and severe melancholia and was not at
all happy with his appearance. But by the age of sixteen he was drawing “for
bread and cheese” and by nineteen published an illustrated album of parrots.
The Earl of Derby, who kept a private menagerie, sponsored him to study the
exotic birds in particular. I’m sure it would have given him so much happiness
if he had known that he was going to be loved and read with such affection by
generations of children and their parents.