Lear (1812-1888) was forced due to ill health to abandon England as his permament home in 1837 and thereafter travelled extensively thoughout Europe, even going as far afield as India when over sixty years of age. His travels through Corsica however took place between April and June 1868.
The two rare proof plates are of ‘Scenery at Sartene’ and ‘Tombs at Sartene’ These make for a fascinating companion to the first edition. Indeed, this volume is mocked up roughly in accordance with the final product with manuscript annotations (in an unknown hand) indicating the sequence in which the plates should appear.
Signed “F. Lushington Jan 1870” to whom the book is dedicated by Lear: “Frank Lushington former member of the Supreme Council of Justice in the Ionian Islands and still earlier the companion of my travels in Greece”.
Lear met Frank Lushington on Malta in 1849 and the two men became lifelong friends. They travelled through Greece together visiting ancient ruins and hilltop fortresses; when Lushington was appointed Judge to the Supreme Court of Justice in the Ionian Islands, Lear began spending his winters in Corfu to be near him. During his visits to England in the 1850s, Lear made the acquaintance of Lushington’s entire family. In A Circle of Friends: The Tennysons and Lushingtons of Park House (1986), John O. Waller describes the composition of the Lushington household at the time. Frank was still unmarried, but his brother, Edmund Law Lushington, and Edmund’s wife, the former Cecilia Tennyson, had four children: Edmund (“Eddy”), Cecilia (“Zilly”), Emily (“Emmy”), and Lucy. Lear’s gifts to the Lushington children included an album containing drawings of birds, animals and landscapes, which he presented to Zilly on her tenth birthday in 1855. The Spencer Book of Nonsense was probably another gift to one of the children in this family. Frank Lushington married Kate Morgan in 1862, and Lear was subsequently godfather to their three children, Henry, Gertrude and Mildred.
