A Blog of Bosh

JOHN UPDIKE: Lear, Far and Near
Even during Edward Lear’s lifetime, his nonsense verse tended to detract from the seriousness of his landscape painting. In the corner of a letter Lear had written Ruskin in 1883, the great critic nonresponsively jotted, “Is this the nonsense man?” A few years later, Ruskin in Pall Mall Magazine praised [...]

You Elegant Fowl
This is only the Food column from the New York Times Magazine, but I could not resist the title! No reference to Lear is made in the article.

A replica of the complete Birds of America, by Audubon
the only one who could compete with Lear in bird illustration.This site includes the full text and several indexes, but the scans could be better. Unfortunately, the Elwell Sale Stewart Library seems to have stopped archiving images from its Audubon.

Foundation for the Preservation of the Hyacinth Macaw
A nonprofit foundation incorporated in 1991 with the goal of preserving the Hyacinth Macaw and other birds of the world’s tropics through education, research, ecotourism and captive breeding.[Has a gallery with some reproductions of Lear's macaws.]

Misguided genius
“I bleed over every phrase,” Raymond Roussel told the psychologist Pierre Janet, who believed that his patient suffered a “displaced form of religious mania” that accounted for “Roussel’s misguided conviction of his literary genius”.The Sunday Times: Books:

Observer review: Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams by Mark Ford
By 30, feeling he had achieved the required ’sensations of art’, he embarked on the novel Impressions d’Afrique. This reveals an extraordinary world which he elaborated for the rest of his life, suspended, as Cocteau said, ‘from elegance, fairyland and fear’ and full of [...]

Edward Gorey
No one sheds light on darkness from quite the same perspective as this Cape Cod specialist in morbid, fine-lined jocularity.[This is a long article on Gorey's career from Salon's 'Brilliant Careers' series. A 'Gorey Gallery' is also included.]Salon People

The following items link to pages in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, with descriptions of collections containing Edward Lear material.

ALFRED TENNYSON COLLECTION
Ongoing collection of documents acquired by gift and purchase from various sources. Type of accession (gift or purchase) and date of acquisition is noted in the box-and-folder list. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.[Includes several letters on the Lear-illustrated Tennyson's Works, as well as a few letters from Lear to the Tennyson [...]

STEVEN H. SCHEUER COLLECTION OF TELEVISION PROGRAM SCRIPTS
[Includes script for a 10 Jun 1956 'Nonsense (Edward Lear)' program.]Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University