Cadogan Guide Lear's Italy In The Footsteps Of Edward Lear

Known the world over as the author of The Book of Nonsense, Edward Lear was also one of the leading artists of the Victorian era and a one-time tutor to the young Queen Victoria. Settling in Italy in 1837 at the age of 25 for health reasons, he remained there for the rest of his life apart from the dangerous period of the Risorgimento (he was once arrested in mistake for the Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston, an outspoken supporter of the revolution), and his work as an artist and travel writer took him to the remotest corners of the country. Michael Montgomery's introduction to Italy was similarly marked by his arrest, during his first long vacation from Oxford, for a late-night dip in Rome's Trevi Fountain, but since then his many subsequent visits as a historian and novelist have embedded in him an equally strong affection for all things Italian. His interest in Edward Lear has grown likewise over three decades, ever since his chance discovery of a set of Lear's lithographs of Italian mountain villages in a London gallery. In Lear's Italy, Montgomery has combined these two loves to produce a continuous narrative of Lear's life and travels from 1837 to his death in 1888. In the conviction that Lear serves as his own best and most evocative spokesman, he has drawn as widely as possible on Edward's diaries, travelogues and voluminous letters; the result is a compelling portrait of a remarkable human being and his adopted country.Montgomery, Michael is the author of 'Cadogan Guide Lear's Italy In The Footsteps Of Edward Lear' with ISBN 9781860112195 and ISBN 1860112196.