The Remarkable Nature of Edward Lear

Edward Lear (1812-1888) is known and cherished for “The Owl and the Pussycat” and other works of literary nonsense. He was also an accomplished painter of birds, mammals, reptiles, and landscapes. Lear depicted parrots, macaws, toucans, owls, and other birds with scientific accuracy and a noteworthy sense of character, and reproduced his illustrations using the newly invented technique of lithography. An adventurous global traveler, Lear painted mammals ranging from hedgehogs and kangaroos to bats and Tasmanian devils. Although Lear’s nonsense verse has often prompted comparisons to Lewis Carroll, his private and enigmatic disposition has left him little known and less understood than his literary peer. Robert McCracken Peck, author of the new illustrated book "The Natural History of Edward Lear," will discuss the remarkable life and work of this beloved children’s writer, who abruptly and mysteriously abandoned his scientific aspirations soon after achieving preeminence in the field.

Robert Peck is curator of art and artifacts at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University and a guest curator of a bicentennial exhibition of Edward Lear’s natural history paintings at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. A writer, naturalist, and historian who has traveled extensively to remote regions of the Amazon rainforest and Mongolian steppes, he is the author of several books on other masters of wildlife art and has lectured widely on Lear in the United States, Australia, and Great Britain.

Registration is not required.

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The Athenæum's five galleried floors overlook the peaceful Granary Burying Ground, and, as Gamaliel Bradford wrote in 1931, "it is safe to say that [no library] anywhere has more an atmosphere of its own, that none is more conducive to intellectual aspiration and spiritual peace." The building was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

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