Among Mr. Lear's characters, I really do most sincerely appreciate Violet, Lionel, Guy, and Slingsby.

I grew up with this book of Victorian nonsense, thanks to my grandmother. Its alphabets are still hard to beat, as are the words and wordplay in very many of its poems. Several of the few poems I know by heart are from Lear.

so far it is lovely. i especially enjoy his nonsense botany doodles and other artwork included!

never againg like tree funny ones in the whole book

My first experience with Edward Lear was memorizing the entirety of his classic The Owl and the Pussycat as a kid. I loved that poem then and I still think it's a masterpiece that made me interested in exploring Lear further at some point.

Now that I'm working my way through a list of classic children's literature I have finally had that opportunity. I'm sorry to say that even though Lear didn't write too much nonsense verse in comparison to his day-job of illustration, his work is just too formulaic for me to fully enjoy. I'm someone who enjoys surrealism, whimsy, and other forms of the bizarre and strange. I appreciate what Lear did to pioneer this movement with his contemporary Lewis Carroll. But what you get here is mostly limericks that go something like this:

There was an Old Man of Finway
He wore the most regal clothes every day
But he lost all his cloth, because there was a giant Moth
Who ate all those clothes right off the Old Man of Finway

(That was not Lear, but an example I wrote)

The first line is usually about an "old man of [insert place here]" and ends with the same rhyme. One or two of these can be humorous, but reading 50+ of them in a row is unpleasant.

I really enjoyed the Nonsense Botany section, but the alphabet wasn't quite funny enough. My favorite parts were the Nonsense Songs, which were not as tied to a formula as the limericks were.

2.5/5