Robert McCracken Peck on the new edition of The Natural History of Edward Lear

September Afternoon Program

Robert McCracken Peck

“There was an old man with a beard, who said: ‘It is just as I feared!’
Two owls and a hen, four larks and a wren have all built their nests in my beard.” 

That’s Edward Lear in a nutshell. The literary nonsense you may have grown up with and an affinity for winged creatures, brought to life through his exceptional paintings and timeless illustrations. Lear and his work as a naturalist will come to life as Robert McCracken Peck reveals his remarkable story through a presentation on the new edition of The Natural History of Edward Lear featuring a boatload of illustrations. (A boat plenty big enough for The Owl and the Pussycat.)

Robert McCracken Peck is the curator of art and artifacts at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia, and a guest curator of a bicentennial exhibition of Edward Lear’s natural history paintings at Harvard University’s Houghton Library. He is an active member of the Explorer’s Club who has retraced the travel routes of naturalists such as William Bartram, John James Audubon, Alexander Von Humboldt, and John Muir. Mr. Peck is probably the only Caxton Club presenter ever to have a species of South American frog named for him.

The new edition of The Natural History of Edward Lear is available from Princeton University Press.

A limited number of signed bookplates are available. Email your request with your mailing address to info@caxtonclub.org.