Lear used to say, in later life, that he could remember being taken out of bed, wrapped in a blanket, and held at an upper window of the big house at Highgate where he was born -- which looked, from the top of its steep hill, far out over London -- to watch the fireworks that celebrated the victory of Waterloo. He was three years old at the time: he was, in fact, born in May 1812, the youngest of an enormous family which, after the bankruptcy and ruin of the father, dispersed to the four winds. The delicate, short-sighted little boy was brought up by his eldest sister Ann, twenty-one years older than himself, and at fifteen was already beginning to earn his living by doing commissioned drawings, of medical and other subjects, for a few shillings. In 1832 he was hired by the London Zoological Society to execute illustrations of birds. In the same year, the Earl of Derby invited Lear to reside at his estate; Lear ended up staying on until 1836.His first book of poems, A Book of Nonsense (1846) was composed for the grandchildren of the Derby household.