We know Mr. Lear (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $45) now mostly for his nonsense, but he was a talented artist, writer, and composer. His other great gift was for friendship, most famously with Tennyson, whose poems he set to music. Mostly self-taught, he gained fame painting birds. Audubon was an admirer. Lear even gave drawing lessons to Queen Victoria. Despite being epileptic and prone to depression, he travelled, almost constantly, throughout England, in Europe and in the east, producing books of his journeys illustrated with his landscape paintings. His first nonsense verse and absurd drawings were done to amuse patrons, friends, and their children, then delighted the public when published in 1846. In this engrossing biography, illustrated with numerous drawings and paintings, Jenny Uglow presents the contrasts of Lear, serious painter and sketcher of the ridiculous, travel writer and author of bosh.
