caption death_date death_place birth_place citizenship imagesize nationality ethnicity birth_date period genre image article_title name occupation
lear in 1888 29 january 1888 sanremo , liguria , italy holloway , middlesex , england british , italian 200px british english 12 may 1812 19th century children 's literature , literary nonsense edwardlear.jpg edward lear
 edward lear artist , illustrator , writer , poet
edward lear

edward lear -lrb- 12 or 13 may 1812 -- 29 january 1888 -rrb- was an english artist , illustrator , musician , author and poet , and is known now mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks , a form he popularised .
his principal areas of work as an artist were threefold : as a draughtsman employed to illustrate birds and animals ; making coloured drawings during his journeys , which he reworked later , sometimes as plates for his travel books ; as a -lrb- minor -rrb- illustrator of alfred tennyson 's poems .
as an author , he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems , songs , short stories , botanical drawings , recipes , and alphabets .
he also composed and published twelve musical settings of tennyson 's poetry .
