The Victorian Era marked a distinct shift in the focus of children’s literature, from predominantly didactic to narrative, with an added emphasis on the reader’s pleasure. This paper investigates the work of Victorian nonsense poet Edward Lear in the light of this literary exchange. Lear’s nonsense poetry concerns itself with the realities of adulthood. His longer nonsense poems often act as ruminations on complex topics such as intimacy, loneliness, rejection, and nonconformism. This paper offers an examination of the impact of Lear’s personal life on his romantic poetry and the ways in which his relationship with organized society led him to write verse which promotes nonconformism and liberation from the status quo. When Lear explores mature subject matter through poetry, which he does rather often, his vehicle is nonsense, a genre that makes serious topics appear light-hearted and accessible to young audiences. This paper examines the ways in which Edward Lear’s poetry both contributes to the literary shift from didactic to narrative and deviates from the standard, “progressive” children’s literature of the mid nineteenth century. My survey of Lear’s work explores his use of nonsense language and how it leads to greater variations of poetic interpretation among young readers.
