He worked as an engineering fitter, and later as a lathe turner and a crane driver, while educating himself at Leeds City Library.
In the early 1960s he met several other like-minded people, including Patrick Hughes, Ian Breakwell and Glen Baxter.
Hughes persuaded Earnshaw to hold a retrospective at the Leeds Institute in 1966, which was followed by an exhibition in Exeter, The Enchanted Domain, to which he was invited by John Lyle.
The book is a fantasy, peppered with aphorisms ("Sudden prayers make God jump"), and tells the story of the title character's kingdom and of his battle with the nefarious Weedking.
[3] Later publications included a cartoon in the Times Educational Supplement, a wheeled bird named Wokker, and books of aphorisms, the largest being Flick Knives and Forks in 1982.