Lear could draw, too. And he knew how to have fun. What is not to love?

Well, he's not PC, but some of the poems are quite funny.

Lear is a master of the limerick and humorous poetry. My dad bought an older edition for us when we were kids and I was brought up on these nonsense rhymes and strange but endearingly funny illustrations. "The Owl and the Pussycat" will always have a special place in my heart because my grandma would recite it to me with a grin shortly after singing Eidelweiss or some other song. It's really no surprise that Lear was an inspiration to so many.

I had fond memories of memorising poems by Edward Lear at school but obviously they picked out the best ones for us. En masse I found his work tiresome, there are pages and pages of limericks that are virtually the same and his alphabets are not much better.

It was interesting to learn a little more about his life. I didn't know he was the 20th child! He was also a talented artist and was drawing master to Queen Victoria. There are a couple of coloured plates included in the book of his nature drawings which are just brilliant. His skill at painting birds was said to rival that of Audubon. I think I would rather see a book of his art than his collected writings.

Lear’s compendium of small jokes and assorted nonsense is delightfully funny, and anticipated the comedy of countless generations that depend on the ridiculous. He sums up this philosophy in a quote to be found in the wonderfully written introduction to this volume: ‘Nonsense is the breath of my nostrils’, he wrote. It is a philosophy as much as a genre. For him it was a response to ‘this ludicrously whirligig life which one suffers from first & laughs at afterwards’. Lear himself was not blessed with an easy life, and his comedy offered him a way out. Such limerick’s as the following that I could not help but linking with the current state of the UN prove the point:

There was an Old Man of the Hague,
Whose ideas were excessively vague;
He built a balloon, to examine the moon,
That deluded Old Man of the Hague.

However, underneath the nonsense there is a great poet. Verses such as the following from the “Growling Eclogue” offer wonderful imagery:

Last week I called aloud, O! O! O! O!
The ground is wholly overspread with snow!
Is that at any rate a theme for mirth
Which makes a sugar-cake of all the earth?

His best, though, are his honest and heartfelt poems of disappointment. Among these, read ‘When the light dies away on a calm summer’s eve’, ‘The gloom that winter casts’, and ‘O dear! How disgusting is life!’. Their beauty can be found in such lines as the following from “Miss Maniac” – “And felt how doubly keen it is to mourn – and mourn alone!”.

This is a serious volume. It should be read for its mirth, as well as for the fantastic poet to be found hiding underneath the nonsense.

If you like limericks this is the book for you. I thought it was a lot of fun. And a good reference to get the beat down for your own efforts at limericks.

Overall pretty good. I have to say though that the standards for what makes a good limerick have come a long way since Lear's time.

Good to dip into.

Lear - the master of nonsense. And I do love a bit of nonsense!

The 2004 theatrical release of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy set the literary world on its ear and in search of landmark absurdum. Less ponderous than Lewis Carroll and easier to read than James Joyce, the Victorian illustrator, writer, and yes, absurdist, Edward Lear (1812-1888) fit the bill for many. Fortunately Lear's "The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense" collects nearly all of Lear's output, including his published works, letters and many drawings.

Lear will strike the reader as hilarious fun or insipid drivel depending on the mood in which they encounter him. I admit he is best in small doses, and then, perhaps at bedtime after reading something heavier.

A random limerick:

There was an Old Person of Jodd
Whose ways were perplexing and odd;
She purchased a whistle, and sate on a thistle,
And squeaked to the people of Jodd.

We need nonsense.

Victorian humor at its best.