The “Nonsense” Botanical Illustrations of Victorian Artist-Poet Edward Lear (1871–77)

Since the Vic­to­ri­an era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for gen­er­a­tion upon gen­er­a­tion in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world, the kind of poem that one sim­ply knows, whether one remem­bers actu­al­ly hav­ing read it or not. As with most such works that seep so per­ma­nent­ly into the cul­ture, it does­n’t quite rep­re­sent its author in full. Though more or less of a piece with his cel­e­brat­ed “non­sense” verse (which I myself read in child­hood, more than a cen­tu­ry after its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion), it hints only vague­ly at his intense artis­tic engage­ment with the nat­ur­al world, through the obser­va­tion and live­ly por­tray­al of which he made his name as an illus­tra­tor.

“Lear was an atten­tive and informed read­er of Dar­win; he worked with John Gould, the nat­ur­al-his­to­ry entre­pre­neur who had actu­al­ly picked apart the vari­eties of finch that Dar­win had brought back from the Galá­pa­gos Islands,” writes the New York­er’s Adam Gop­nik, not­ing that his work evi­dences a Lin­naean obses­sion “with the pow­er of nam­ing, with stick­ing a tag on a thing which gives it a place at, and on, the table.” Lear gave Latin names to at least two real species of par­rots, but he also fab­ri­cat­ed such chimeras as Phat­tfa­cia Stu­pen­da, Arm­chairia Com­fort­a­bilis, Tigerlil­ia Ter­ri­bilis, exam­ples of which he also illus­trates in his Non­sense Botany series of the eigh­teen-sev­en­ties.

Lear’s “pen­chant for the nat­ur­al world,” says The Dilet­tante, shaped his “knack for invent­ing ridicu­lous land­scapes and anthro­po­mor­phiz­ing all kind of crea­tures and objects. The result is a sur­re­al Leare­an world of Scroobi­ous Pips, Quan­gle Wan­gles, and Great Grom­boo­lian Plains.” His “fan­ci­ful re-sculpt­ing of the phys­i­cal world is bril­liant­ly exem­pli­fied” in his Non­sense Botany, with its “sketch­es and enter­tain­ing cap­tions read as a tax­on­o­my of incon­gru­ous plant-crea­tures.” Whether at the Pub­lic Domain Review or Project Guten­berg, you can gaze upon them all and expe­ri­ence not just light amuse­ment, but also a kind of aston­ish­ment at Lear’s pecu­liar tal­ent: he does­n’t “find the amaz­ing in the ordi­nary,” as Gop­nik puts it; “he finds the ordi­nary in the amaz­ing.”

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed con­tent:

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

Hor­tus Eystet­ten­sis: The Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Book of Plants That Changed Botan­i­cal Art Overnight (1613)

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

An Ani­mat­ed Read­ing of “The Jab­ber­wocky,” Lewis Carroll’s Non­sense Poem That Some­how Man­ages to Make Sense

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.