Edward Lear wrote a well-known autobiographical poem that begins 'How pleasant to know Mr Lear ' But how well do we really know him? On the one hand he is, in John Ashbery's words, 'one of the most popular poets who ever lived'; on the other hand he has often been overlooked or marginalized by scholars and in literary histories. James Williams's account, the first book-length critical study of the poet since the 1980s, sets out to re-introduce Lear...