Editing Edward Lear (section)

===Early years===
[[File:Edward Lear drawing.jpg|thumb|upright|Lear by [[Wilhelm Marstrand]]]]

Lear was born into a middle-class family at [[Holloway, London|Holloway]], North London, the penultimate of 21 children (and youngest to survive) of Ann Clark Skerrett and Jeremiah Lear, a stockbroker formerly working for the family sugar refining business.<ref>{{cite web|author=James Williams (University of Cambridge) |url=http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2659 |title=Literary Encyclopedia &#124; Edward Lear |publisher=Litencyc.com |date=20 July 2004 |access-date=28 January 2014}}</ref><ref>Edward Lear, Ina Rae Hark, Twayne Publishers, 1982, pg 2</ref> He was raised by his eldest sister, also named Ann, 21 years his senior. Jeremiah Lear ended up defaulting to the London Stock Exchange in the economic upheaval following the Napoleonic Wars.<ref>''Pictures at an Exhibition: Selected Essays on Art and Art Therapy'', ed. Andrea Gilroy and Tessa Dalley, Routledge, 1989, pg 66</ref> Because of the family's now more limited finances, when he was aged four, Lear and his sister were required to leave the family home, Bowmans Lodge, and live together. Ann doted on Edward and continued to act as a mother to him until her death, when he was almost 50 years of age.<ref>Jackson, Holbrook (ed). ''The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear''. Dover Publications, 1951. Page xii.</ref>

Lear had lifelong health problems. From the age of six, he had frequent ''grand mal'' [[epileptic seizure]]s, [[bronchitis]], [[asthma]] and, during later life, partial blindness. Lear experienced his first seizure at a fair near Highgate when with his father. The event scared and embarrassed him. He felt lifelong guilt and shame for his epileptic condition, and his adult diaries indicate that he always sensed the onset of a seizure in time to remove himself from public view. When Lear was about seven years old he began to show signs of depression, possibly due to the instability of his childhood. He had periods of severe [[melancholia]] which he referred to as "the Morbids".<ref>{{cite book |title=The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense |url=https://archive.org/details/completeverseoth00lear |url-access=limited |last=Lear |first=Edward |year=2002 |publisher=Penguin Books |location=New York |isbn=0-14-200227-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/completeverseoth00lear/page/19 19]–20}}</ref>