Here is a typical Edward Lear caricature self-portrait I saved from an eBay auction a few months ago (starting price was GBP750.00 with an estimate of 1,500-2,000):
The speech bubble contains a message to Evelyn Baring, first Earl of Cromer (1841-1917): “9 A.M. will do beautifully but I would have made 6-7-or 8 do if H.E wished it.”
I have been looking for episodes from the Tomfoolery Show at least since 2002, when I heard of this show largely based on characters created by Edward Lear.
While no episode has turned up so far, Ron Kurer’s Toon Tracker at least provides a few pictures; according to the entry, Tomfoolery was
a series patterned after NBC’s then popular live-action Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, aired on NBC-TV from September 12, 1970 through September 4, 1971. It was a Rankin-Bass Production, produced in England by Halas & Batchelor Animation Ltd.
The series was based upon the nonsensical verse and whimsical characters of authors such as Edward Lear, Ogden Nash, Frank Gelett Burgess, and Lewis Carroll. It was billed as a mixture of “Riddles, Jokes and Silly Things”.
Some of the characters included The Yonghy Bonghy Bo (a creature whose head was larger than his body), The Scrooby Snake, The Umbrageous Umbrella Maker, The Purple Cow, Goops, The Fastidious Fish, and The Enthusiastic Elephant. The voices were provided by Peter Hawkins, Bernard Spear, and The Maury Laws Singers. The show was intended to entertain and educate the younger viewers on the elements of children’s literature, but most viewers were confused by the disjointed and difficult to follow segments and it left the air within a year.
Halas & Batchelor (short biographies on screenonline), by the way, also produced a nice 3D cartoon from “The Owl and Pussycat” in 1952 which is available (in normal 2D) on the DVD The Cartoons of Halas & Batchelor (Hen’s Tooth Video, 2000).
Lear Productions, a division of RS Productions, is filming a three-part TV series on Edward Lear’s travels in Greece and Albania, writer and traveller Rob Horne will follow in the footsteps of Lear. The first programme is ready and the second should have been filmed in April-May. A gallery of images is available on the official web site.
The series, which is filmed in high definition, will be offered to the world television market in 2008.
Thanks to Derek Smith, director of the series.
Archive.org has placed online the two early collections of Edward Lear’s letters:
Letters of Edward Lear to Chichester Fortescue, Lord Carlingford, and Frances Countess Waldegrave. Edited by Lady Strachey. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907 (1909 edition).
Later letters of Edward Lear to Chichester Fortescue (Lord Carlingford), Frances, Countess Waldegrave, and others. Edited by Lady Strachey. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1911.
The books can be downloaded in several formats, the one I prefer is searchable PDF as you get the image of every single page and can still search the text (faster than scanning the book index).
Lesley of Birds Ahoy! has found these delicious biscuits:
The illustration of the package is also very beautiful:
The producer has a website, but at the moment no information is available.
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1899, vol. C, No. DXCV, “Literary Notes” by John Kendrick Bangs, review of Peter Newell’s Pictures and Rhymes:
… Equally individual in the character of his work is Mr. Peter Newell, who has just published a collection of his quaintly illustrated nonsense verses under the title of Peter Newell’s Pictures and Rhymes. The world has for a long time yearned for an acceptable successor to Edward Lear, whose “Book of Nonsense” has been for many years a household treasure, and Mr. Newell appears to be about the worthiest of all the candidates. There is a whimsical touch in all that he does, whether it be in picture or in text, that appeals to the soul of man, and it is his good fortune to be wholly original. There is never any mistaking Mr. Newell’s work for that of any other picture-maker past or present, and in his rhyming he seems to have hit upon a form and a manner which are as distinctively his own as were the rhymes of Lear characteristic of the older man. Mr. Newell is fortunate in having a double gift. We know of no other illustrator who could enter so thoroughly into the spirit of his rhymes, and he is to be congratulated upon his complete accord with himself, which was never more conspicuously shown than in this volume.
When, about two years ago, I posted about the illustrations to three of Edward Lear’s poems first published in Our Young Folks, I had to omit one of the illustrations for “The Owl and the Pussy-cat” for the simple reason that my collection of the magazine is missing the February 1870 issue in which it was published. The image I used came from a Justin G. Schiller catalogue. Now, thanks to Google Books scanning the relavant issues, I can present both illustrations to the first edition of Lear’s Most famour poem; the second, missing one, show the lovers dancing “by the light of the moon.”
From Our Young Folks, February 1870, p. 111.
A new Edward Lear animation is available on YouTube, Edward Lear Poetic Stories, in Czech, I think, written and directed by Jana Šobáňová in 2005. That’s as much as I manage to gather. Listening to the sung text it would appear to consist of three limericks (though the third one seems to add some text); I can almost imagine which of Lear’s ones they are, though I won’t risk my reputation, if I have one.
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Very nice anyway, in my opinion.
Yesterday’s Speed Bump cartoon, by Dave Coverly, had Edward Lear’s Owl and Pussy-Cat as protagonists:
Violets Adventure, based on Edward Lear’s “The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Round the World“, here is what the author writes:
I started off by illustrating the characters then scanned them into a computer and put them against photo realistic backgrounds. I wanted the contrast between the hand drawn illustrations and the crisp photographs to emphasise the contrast of reality and fantasy in the story. Edward Lear wrote querky stroies, poems and limericks for children in the 1800s, I wanted the style to have a naive quality so choose to work in black and white with a sepia tone.
“The Table and the Chair” adapted for Brooklyn Blowback TV; a reading of Lear’s poem from an illustrated book:
A Blog of Bosh 