Edward Lear (1812-1888) - photo 1
Edward Lear (1812-1888) - photo 2
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Edward Lear (1812-1888)

Lot 128
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 504
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1108927
Lot 128 | Edward Lear (1812-1888)
Estimate value
£ 1 000 – 1 500
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
Autograph letter signed (‘Edward Lear’) to Emily Tennyson, Stratford Place, Oxford Street, 6 March 1861
Eight pages, 110 x 179mm, two bifolia, with additional annotations in blue pencil by author. Provenance: Papers of Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Sotheby's, 21 & 22 July 1980, lot 395.

Expressing his dislike of the company he finds in London, describing his life while working on the new edition of A Book of Nonsense, and sharing his scorn upon the superstitions of the church. Concerning his current writing process, ‘although I am doomed to do nothingness just now, I am so unsettled that I cannot write, ­-& it is only because I am a tome & have been dining on cold beer & beef that I am able to write a tall’. Continuing, ‘For, since I asked people to come & see my picture, they come,-horribly & disjointedly; sometimes 20 at a time-of all kinds of phases of life: sometimes-for 3 hours no one comes:-so then I partly sleep, & partly draw pages of a new Nonsense book. If I sleep, I wake up savagely at some new comer’s entrance, & they go away abashed. If I write nonsense, I am pervaded with smiles, & please the visitors’.

Complaining of the company he finds in London ‘the big folk are in most cases a norful bore. To hear the bigots & the apes talk of the Essays & Reviews!!-It makes one ill’ and of the religious bigotry and superstition that he encounters: ‘if a man cares to believe the bread & wine made yesterday is the flesh & blood of a person dead 2000 years ago – how can he laugh at Timbuctoo & Mumbo Jumbo? Yet one may pity these poor fanatics - & never in anywise persecute them, for they are but as children who cannot reason much’. Expressing anxiety regarding the health of his sister Ann: ‘I am very uncomfortable about it, tho’ I cannot at all realize her not getting well. She brought me up from the leastest childhood, & when she goes,-my whole life will change utterly’ and anticipates a tour of Greece when her health improves where he hopes to ‘perjuice a nillustrated work by supscribten’.

Lear had been good friends with Alfred, Lord Tennyson for a number of years and the pair corresponded and met frequently, often discussing their poetry. They stopped speaking in the 1860s owing to an argument between them, despite this, Lear remained in contact with Alfred’s younger sister, Emily. Lear published his third edition of A Book of Nonsense in December 1861.
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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