English writer and illustrator Edward Lear was BOTD in 1812. Born in London, the youngest surviving child of 21 children, he grew up in poverty, suffering epilepsy, bronchitis and asthma from an early age. He began his career as an draughtsman, publishing a book of illustrations of parrots. He travelled extensively through Europe and the Far East, working as a landscape artist. He is best known for his nonsense verse, popularising the limerick as a form of comic writing. His best-known poem, The Owl and the Pussycat, was published in 1871. A lifelong bachelor, he developed an intense and unrequited passion for his friend Franklin Lushington. Later in life he proposed marriage to a woman 46 years his junior, who also refused him. He settled in San Remo, Italy, dying there in 1888 aged 75.