A Blog of Bosh

News of several events celebrating Edward Lear’s bicentenary are starting to circulate and it is time to draw up a list, which I will try to keep updated as the events are confirmed:

• Monday, 30 January 2012, 5.30 pm: Stephen Duckworth, who has recently published an article on the subject, will give a lecture on Edward Lear and His Cretan Drawings. King’s College, London: Modern Greek Seminars.
• Monday, 30 January 2012, 5.15 pm: James Williams, Brasenose and Jesus Colleges: Edward Lear’s Origins lecture, Oxford Children’s Literature and Youth Culture Colloquium, Seminar Room A, English Faculty Building. Directions & map.
  Abstract: Lear was a writer of and for children, people at the beginning of their life: he is also considered, rightly or wrongly, as a starting-point, the originating ‘Father of Nonsense’. This paper considers Lear’s concern with origins (both a private fascination and a Victorian cultural obsession): where we come from, how we begin to speak, how to make new starts. It also gives some thought to the origins, and originality, of his nonsense, in the context of a Romantic inheritance of writing about children.
• 24-26 February 2012: The Owl + the Pussycat, at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. For children aged 3-7. Book tickets.
• 16 March ― 28 April 2012: Edward Lear’s Birds from John Gould’s Birds of Europe, an exhibition at Joel Oppenheimer Inc., Wrigley Building, 410  North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. Also in Charleston, at The Audubon Gallery, from 25 May ― 30 June 2012. Invitation.
• 23 March 2012, 8.30 pm: Mister Lear’s “The Nervous Family Tour,” Theatre de la Reine Blanche, 2 passage Ruelle, 75018 Paris. Poster.
• Tuesday, 20 March 2012, BBC Radio 4, 4 pm: Word of Mouth, “Festival of Nonsense” program; to be repeated on 26 March at 11 pm. See comments for more information from Michael Rosen.
• 21 March ― 3 June 2012: Nonsense: Spielarten einer merkwürdigen Literaturgattung (Nonsense: Varieties of a Remarkable Literary Genre), exhibition at Museum Strauhof, Zürich. Starting from Edward Lear’s A Book of Nonsense, the exhibition includes Lewis Carroll, Christian Morgenstern and other modern German-language nonsense writers. Official page in German & Google-translated in English.
• 2 April ― 18 August 2012: The Natural History of Edward Lear, an exhibition curated by Robert McCracken Peck, Senior Fellow of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Houghton Library, Harvard University.
• Thursday 5 April 2012: The Remarkable Nature of Edward Lear, an illustrated lecture on Lear’s natural history paintings by Robert McCracken Peck. Harvard. Venue and time to be announced.
• 8 May for approximately two or three months:  The British Museum, London, are planning a small display of Edward Lear drawings and watercolours from their collection in Room 90.
• 11 ― 20 May: Derbyshire Literature Festival, featuring a Nonsense Poetry & Flash Fiction Competion to celebrate Edward Lear’s bicentenary.

Saturday, 12 May 2012
Edward Lear’s 200th Birthday

• Flowers will be placed outside 15 Stratford Place, London W.1, which was Lear’s London home in the 1860s.
• The Fine Art Society will host a celebratory event at 148 New Bond Street, London W.1, from 10 am to 6 pm.   Works by Lear will be on display, as will books and exhibition catalogues.   Some of the books he wrote and those about him may be on sale.   There will be a few short speeches about Lear and to acknowledge the late Vivien Noakes’ contribution to Lear studies.
  Timings of the Stratford Place ceremony and the speeches at the Fine Art Society will be announced nearer the date.
• Newquay Zoo, Cornwall, UK: International Owl and Pussycat Day to celebrate Edward Lear’s 200th birthday. Write your own limericks, have a go at making your own beard and create your own utterly nonsensical botanical plants. Normal zoo entry costs and opening times apply ― see website for details. Also visit the official blog, Teaching Nonsense in Schools.
• 12-13 May 2012: The Oxford English Dictionary “Word of the Day” posts will feature Edward Lear words. Twitter.
  

• 25 May ― 31 August 2012: Edward Lear and the Ionian Islands. Exhibition at the Palace of St Michael and St George, Kerkyra Town, Corfu.  The exhibition of oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and engravings will be curated by Despina Zernioti. Official site.
• 30 May 2012, 12.30: Jennifer Melville, Lead Curator at the Aberdeen Art Gallery, will be giving a lunchtime talk on Lear’s Bocche di Cattaro (1866). Aberdeen Art Gallery, Schoolhill, ABERDEEN, AB10 1FQ; tel: 00 44 (0)1224 523703; fax: 00 44 (0)1224 632133. Facebook & Twitter.
• Friday, 15 June 2012, 7.30 pm: Edward Lear: Zoology, Landscape, Nonsense and the Demon of Epilepsy. In an illustrated survey of Lear’s life, Charles Lewsen will quote diary evidence of seizures and, with images from landscape paintings and Nonsense, will indicate the impact on Lear’s life and work of a condition that he was at pains to keep secret.  The Bridge Foundation for Psychotherapy and the Arts, Bristol, phone 0117-942 4510. £10.00, advance booking required.
• 21 June 2012, 7-8 pm: Edward Lear in Liverpool. To celebrate the bicentenary of Lear’s birth, Dr Clemency Fisher from National Museums Liverpool explores Lear’s time working as an artist for the 13th Earl of Derby at Knowsley Hall, painting individuals in the huge Knowsley Aviary and Menagerie, and why he became a much-loved member of the Earl’s household. The Natural History Museum at Tring, Akeman Street, Tring, Herts, HP23 6AP.
• 23 June ― 8 September 2012, Falmouth Art Gallery, Cornwall, UK: the Soaring Spirits exhibition will feature works by Edward Lear. More Lear events planned at this family friendly and free gallery.
• 21-22 September, 2012, Jesus College, Oxford: Edward Lear: the Bicentennial Conference. The first conference ever on the works of Lear. Official site.
  Speakers: Anna Barton, Gillian Beer, Matthew Bevis, Aingeal Clare, Richard Cronin, Christopher Decker, Hugh Haughton, Daniel Karlin, Robert M. Peck, Adam Phillips, Seamus Perry, Peter Robinson, Anne Stillman, Peter Swaab, James Williams (one other TBC).
• Thursday 27 September 2012, 6 pm: At an evening meeting of the Linnean Society of London and the Society for the History of Natural History: Robert McCracken Peck on The Remarkable Nature of Edward Lear. The Linnean Society of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BF.
• Thursday, 1 November 2012, 6 pm.  Edward Lear’s Lines of Flight, the 2012 British Academy Chatterton Lecture on Poetry by Dr. Matthew Bevis of Keble College, Oxford who will talk about Lear’s paintings as well as his poetry. The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH, phone: 0207-969 5200

Please visit the Facebook page, and don’t forget to check my Edward Lear’s Diaries blog, which will keep posting Lear’s journal entries right up to his fiftieth birthday.