The bicentenary of the great nonsense poet, artist and travel writer Edward Lear falls on 12 May, and celebrations are taking place around the country, this month and next. A collection of Lear's nonsense and travel writing, Over the land and over the sea is published by Carcanet Press under the FyfieldBooks imprint.

On Saturday 12 May there will be a series of commemorative events in London, including the unveiling of a Westminster City Council Green Plaque at 15 Stratford Place, London W1, the site of the house that was Edward Lear’s London base in the 1860s; and a ceremony from in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey. Click here to see details. The Poetry Society's ‘Happy Birthday Edward Lear’ exhibition at the Poetry Café, London will feature work by an astonishing range of over 40 artists and illustrators. The exhibition runs from Monday 7 May to Friday 8 June. Click here for more information.

In addition, Newquay Zoo in Cornwall will host International Owl and Pussycat Day to celebrate Edward Lear’s 200th birthday, and the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education is offering a course on English Nonsense. For more information on these and other celebratory events, click here.

Edward Lear was born in London in 1812. The youngest of a family of twenty children, he was largely brought up by his sister Ann. His first commission as a young artist, to make drawings of the parrots in the London Zoo, established his reputation as an ornithological illustrator and led to him being taken on by the Earl of Derby to produce illustrations of his menagerie at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool. It was whilst working at Knowsley that Lear began to write nonsense verse, to entertain the Earl's children. In 1846 he was engaged to give a series of drawing lessons to Queen Victoria. Lear became a successful artist, an associate of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and with work accepted by the Royal Academy, but his health was poor, and he was prone to depression; the death of Ann in 1861 was particularly distressing to him, Throughout his life he travelled widely in Southern Europe and further afield in Egypt, the Holy Land and India, writing and painting. In 1870 Lear built a house in San Remo, where he died in 1888.