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Tuesday, January 23, 2001
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 the writer but ignored the artist. Posthumously, appreciation of the art must work its way around (to quote a review from 1930) "the Himalaya of nonsense [whereupon] Edward Lear sits enthroned." The catalog of one exhibit of his watercolors almost insultingly speaks of "Edward Lear, 'the landscape painter' as he was wont to call himself."
New York Review of Books
posted by Marco Graziosi Tuesday, January 23, 2001
Monday, January 22, 2001
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.
posted by Marco Graziosi Monday, January 22, 2001
Thursday, January 18, 2001
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.
posted by Marco Graziosi Thursday, January 18, 2001
Wednesday, January 17, 2001
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.]
posted by Marco Graziosi Wednesday, January 17, 2001
Tuesday, January 16, 2001
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:
posted by Marco Graziosi Tuesday, January 16, 2001
Saturday, January 13, 2001
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 inventors, virtuosi and miraculous inventions. A worm, for instance, in a trough full of a strange water as heavy as mercury with a narrow slit in its base, suspended above a zither. Trained by a Hungarian musician, the worm arches its body to regulate the flow of drops on to the zither and thus plays wondrously complex rhapsodies and waltzes with 'a savagely dramatic range of expression'. Entering his flood of stories is, as André Gide said, like being swept up in a Gulf Stream of the imagination.
Books Unlimited
posted by Marco Graziosi Saturday, January 13, 2001
Monday, January 08, 2001
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
posted by Marco Graziosi Monday, January 08, 2001
The following items link to pages in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, with descriptions of collections containing Edward Lear material.
posted by Marco Graziosi Monday, January 08, 2001
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 family, generally containing caricatures.]
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
posted by Marco Graziosi Monday, January 08, 2001
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
posted by Marco Graziosi Monday, January 08, 2001
OSBORN 19TH CENTURY BOUND MANUSCRIPTS (FOLIO)
[Full list of the Osborn shelves material, which includes Lear watercolors.]
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
posted by Marco Graziosi Monday, January 08, 2001
BURNEY-LEAR DRAWINGS
The Burney-Lear Drawings consists of over 1,000 watercolors, sketches, and drawings by Edward Francis Burney, other members of the Burney family, members of the Hoare family, Edward Lear, and others. Most of the drawings are unsigned, and some of the attributions are still uncertain. The majority of the material appears to date from the first half of the nineteenth century.
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
posted by Marco Graziosi Monday, January 08, 2001
Saturday, January 06, 2001
Edward Lear.
The author of one of the most original books of comic verse ever written, Edward Lear, though he was a great traveller, had not much to do with Bohemia. An artist he was in more than one sense and in more than one branch of art; but none of his artistries led him Prague-wards, just as the fact that he owed not a little to patronage did not, in the least, subject him to any of the trials, or tempt him into any of the revolts and excesses, of Bohemia’s uglier elder sister Grub street. Severe critics in the arts of design have admitted him to be an excellent draughtsman: it would be a sufficient and final testimony of the hopelessness of a literary critic if he failed to find in Lear a super-excellent writer of an almost unique kind.
The delightful Book of Nonsense (the form of the verse of which was long afterwards senselessly vulgarised and, in fact, prostituted, in newspaper competitions under the equally senseless name “Limerick”), taking, perhaps, a hint from the immemorial nursery rime, combined sense and nonsense, after the specially English fashion, in a way never known before; while his somewhat longer peoms—The Owl and the Pussy-Cat, the famous Jumblies and others—readjusted the combination in a fashion almost more delectable still.
The Cambridge History of English Literature. Vol. 13. The Victorian Age, Part One. VI. Lesser Poets of the Middle and Later Nineteenth Century. §11.
Bartleby Project
posted by Marco Graziosi Saturday, January 06, 2001
Wednesday, January 03, 2001
ALISON LURIE: On Edward Gorey (1925-2000)
Edward Gorey, who died on April 15, was associated with The New York Review of Books from the beginning. His fantastic and memorable cover illustrations were a feature of every anniversary issue; and in 1975 he contributed an ongoing serial, Les Mystères de Constantinople, whose heroine was thought by some to resemble one of the NYR's editors.
The New York Review of Books
posted by Marco Graziosi Wednesday, January 03, 2001
Monday, January 01, 2001
The Art of Dr. Seuss
Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel's first children's book, "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," was published in 1937; in the year 2000, nine years after his death, the ageless appeal of his whimsical world is selling seats on Broadway ("Seussical") and at the movies ("The Grinch").
Yet most of Geisel's legacy is on paper: nearly four dozen books and countless sketches, drawings, editorial cartoons and commercial art.
latimes.com
posted by Marco Graziosi Monday, January 01, 2001
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