Edward LearEdward Lear (1812 -1888) was an English artist, musician and poet. As an artist, he was employed to illustrate birds and animals; making colored drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books. He also omposed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry in poem.But it was for his writing that Edward Lear is best known. He helped to make limericks popular with the general public when he produced his illustrated collection A Book of Nonsense in 1846. Most children will know the poem The Owl and the Pussycat as it has remained a staple of bedtime reading for more than a century and a half.Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a poet's delight in the sounds of words, both real and imaginary. One of his most famous verbal inventions, the phrase "runcible spoon," occurs in the closing lines of The Owl and the Pussycat, and is now found in many English dictionaries. Read More Read Less