Edward Lear was an English artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

, illustrator

Illustrator

An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...

, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense

Literary nonsense

Literary nonsense is a broad categorization of literature that uses sensical and nonsensical elements to defy language conventions or logical reasoning...

, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks

Limerick (poetry)

A limerick is a kind of a witty, humorous, or nonsense poem, especially one in five-line or meter with a strict rhyme scheme , which is sometimes obscene with humorous intent. The form can be found in England as of the early years of the 18th century...

, a form that he popularised.
Lear was born into a middle-class family in the village of Holloway

Holloway, London

Holloway is an inner-city district in the London Borough of Islington located north of Charing Cross and follows for the most part, the line of the Holloway Road . At the centre of Holloway is the Nag's Head area...

, the 21st child of Ann and Jeremiah Lear. He was raised by his eldest sister, also named Ann, 21 years his senior. Ann doted on Lear and continued to mother him until her death, when Lear was almost 50 years of age.