Edward Lear

Introduction

Edward Lear is probably most famous for his poetry: more specifically his nonsense poetry. For example, 

and

He illustrated these poems himself, like this:

and this:

OK! That's good and I used to read his poetry as a child and as a younger adult but what's that got to do with this blog?

Edward Lear was one of 17, possibly 21, children and when I learned that and looked deeper into his family tree, it turned into a fascinating quest that included dates from the 18th and 19th centuries, that Excel cannot understand. It turned into the analysis of data to test whether there might have been 21 rather than 17 children in that family and then it included what they call data wrangling these days, using these functions:

• CHOOSECOLS()
• GROUPBY()
• PIVOTBY()

Two Videos

Out of all of these insights comes two videos

• edward lear short
• edward lear

They are both on YouTube now on my channel and they are free to watch and the link to the long video is found in the introduction to the shorter video as are the links to the additional materials that I have listed below.

Additional Materials

In addition to the videos, I share with you my PowerPoint slide deck, a PDF file of my conversation with chatGPT as I researched this story and, of course, my Excel file

Overall

Edward Lear was a fascinating man as we can see by his poetry, his illustration and his art work. A lifelong sufferer from epilespsy, he spent large parts of his life travelling and living away from this native England and left his fabulously rich legacy. I touch on one tiny aspect of his life by analysing his family tree but I hope I inspire you to look further so that you can admire the work that Edward left behind

All download links are given above or they are found in the introduction to my video on YouTube

Duncan Williamson

19th December 2024