Edward Lear: The Bicentennial Conference
Jesus College, Oxford, 21-22 September 2012
Edward Lear (1812-1888): zoological illustrator, landscape painter, cartoonist, travel writer, drawing master to Queen Victoria, depressive, diarist, friend of the Tennysons, epileptic, exile, and nonsense poet of genius. Praised by Ruskin and Eliot, elegized by Auden, analysed by Orwell and Huxley, Lear has never ceased to fascinate and delight. His life and works intersect major artistic currents of the nineteenth century, and his influence can be felt in successors as diverse as Stevie Smith and John Ashbery, James Joyce and James Thurber.
This two-day conference will be the first ever gathering of scholars to celebrate and discuss Lear’s work in his various creative fields. Interdisciplinary in scope, it will set the agenda for future study, resituating Lear as a major figure in his own time, and showing how he continues to speak to our own.
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
Registration is now open at: http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&prodid=108&deptid=110&catid=22. Registration closes September 14, 2012.
For further information, please contact james.williams@jesus.ox.ac.uk