Edward Lear and the Play of Poetry
Edited by James Williams and Matthew Bevis
Reviews and Awards
"Makes a convincing case for Lear's enduring interest not just for Victorianists but for those who would seek to understand modernist and later twentieth-century innovations in poetic form . . . The play's the thing, as this lovely collection shows again and again." --Victorian Studies
"The Play of Poetry sounds like a deference to the particular kind of responsibility that belongs to good art and artists. It does justice to an artist properly good, not improperly great: illuminating a writer as responsibly irresponsible as the surprising last lines of his limericks." -- Barbara Everett, Times Literary Supplement
"The clever and vivacious essays assembled by James Williams and Matthew Bevis in Edward Lear: The Play of Poetry build sensibly on these foundations." --Andrew Motion, The Hopkins Review
"Edward Lear and The Play of Poetry [...] feels like it has been gifted to us. [T]he collection revels in the inexplicable mysteriousness of Lear the man, along with his art and the often contradictory emotions it elicits [...] an invitation to wonder." --Joseph Jordan
"a fresh way to read a supposedly minor poet ... I should add that in an era when publishers are cutting corners, this is a particularly pleasing edition, a sturdy volume with good quality paper." --Talia Schaffer, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1990
"Edward Lear and The Play of Poetry [...] feels like it has been gifted to us. [T]he collection revels in the inexplicable mysteriousness of Lear the man, along with his art and the often contradictory emotions it elicits [...] an invitation to wonder." --Joseph Jordan, Tennyson Research Bulletin
"Clever and vivacious essays..."--Andrew Motion, Hopkins Review
"[An] excellent volume....If Edward Lear and the Play of Poetry is any guide to what is to come, the future for Lear studies looks bright indeed. Its contributors show it to be possible to write successfully about his nonsense in diverse ways....Arriving at a moment when Lear's critical fortunes appear to be on the rise, it will be an essential point of reference."--Martin Dubois, Review of English Studies
"An admirable new collection...Rarely does a collection of essays published by an academic press carry such emotional nuance, or tune it to the requirements of literary analysis so deftly and consistently...This collection will swiftly become one of the first ports of call for Lear scholars, but some of its essays deserve to be read by anyone with an interest in the ways we might 'turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us,' as Matthew Arnold put it."--Times Literary Supplement
"Almost every page contained pleasurable surprises."--Paris Review