Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13650...

"By day we fish, and at eve we stand
On long bare islands of yellow sand.
And when the sun sinks slowly down,
And the great rock-walls grow dark and brown,
When the purple river rolls fast and dim,
And the ivory Ibis starlike skim,
Wing to wing we dance around
- from The Pelican Chorus

I love the poem where he introduces himself! From memory:

How pleasant to know Mr Lear!
Who has written such masses of stuff
Some think him ill-tempered and queer
But a few find him pleasant enough.

He sits in a beautiful parlour
With hundreds of books on the wall
He drinks quite a lot of Marsala
But never gets tipsy at all.

He has many friends, laymen and clerical
Old Foss is the name of his cat
His body is perfectly spherical
He weareth a runcible hat.

He reads, but he cannot speak, Spanish
He cannot abide ginger beer
Ere the years of his pilgrimage vanish
How pleasant to know Mr Lear!

This book aint joking when it said complete nonsense, cause it is

It's hard to imagine that there is another reputable author who consistently held himself or herself to as limited an artistic standard as Edward Lear. This volume contains over 100 pages of what we can only call limericks, not one of which is as good as the first poem I found by typing "random limerick" into Google.

But hey -- judge for yourself. Here's a sample from Lear:
"There was an Old Person of Bangor,
Whose face was distorted with anger!
He tore off his boots,
And subsisted on roots,
That irascible Person of Bangor."

Compare this to poem #21 under the heading "Death" in the Wordsworth Book of Limericks:
"A daring young fellow in Bangor
Sneaked a super-swift jet from its hangar.
When he crashed in the bay,
Neighbors laid him away
In rather more sorrow than anger."

If, after carefully considering these poems, you still want to read the present collection, more power to you.

Tô fazendo um dos cursos de inverno na USP cujo tema é o nonsense nas artes, cinema e literatura. Não dá pra falar sobre nada disso sem citar o pai de todos: Edward Lear. Já o tinha o lido, mas não especificamente essa edição que é a mais completa de todas, aqui fica mais do que claro o quanto ele influenciou o século XX.

*read for school

I cannot stress enough how horrible the limericks are. They often have extra syllables that mess up the rhythm, and often rhyme only because they repeat words. However, they, like all the other poems and stories, are accompanied by the authors own entertaining sketches, so I can almost forgive them.

The other songs and stories are wonderful enough that I'll just ignore the limericks.

Content warnings:
* Inter-species marriage.
* A husband refers to his wife as "Oh lovely Pussy, oh Pussy my love, what a wonderful Pussy you are..."
* A very nice rhinoceros is killed and stuffed just so he can be used as a "diaphanous door-scraper".

Many different collections are currently lumped together by the goodreads librarians. They'll probably never be fully straitened out. Here is the contents of the version I read:

The Book of Nonsense - Horrible limericks.
Nonsense Songs and Stories - Wonderful poems and one story (The four little children who went around the world).
100 Nonsense Pictures and Rhymes - More horrible limericks.
An Alphabet - An OK way to teach kids the alphabet, and words like Dolomphious and Runcible.
"How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear" - An OK poem.

4/5 stars. The limericks are a touch disappointing, but I think this is more to do with the format of the times, where the final line is more or less a repetition of the first line, rather than the punchline that we have today. But there is a lot of innocent humor in all of these pages, including the illustrations. I wish there were more “true poems” like ‘The Jumblies’ and ‘The Owl and The Pussycat’.

An entertaining and eclectic read. So full of fun and wonder, and most of all "nonsense" ;)

This is a book written by Edward Lear. This book contains his best rhyming works that he ever wrote. He includes all of his original drawings that were intended for each part of his collection of rhymes. Each rhyme was very funny. This book includes song rhymes, rhyming lyrics, stories, and alphabet rhymes. There really isn't a conflict, plot, resolution, or setting. This is basically a book of rhymes. If i was to describe this book in one word I would say that it is nonsensical. My favorite rhyme from this book is "The Old Man with a Nose". It was very funny and the picture went exactly along with the rhyme. This book of rhymes meets the sound characteristic for poems. All of the rhymes in this book rhyme from line to line exactly. An example of this is like in the rhyme "The Old Man with a Beard" the words beard and feared rhyme exactly. Each of these poems bring clear images to the readers mind. As I read each poem in this book the image that appeared in my mind was very close to the ones present with each poem. An example of the is from the poem " The Old Man with a Nose" as you read this poem you think of a man with a nose like an elephant, and that is exactly like the picture that is presented. The poems from this book provide very good insight. Once you read this book you can't say you are not in good spirits. Each poem is funnier than the past one. There is a lot of creative word play used in this book through the poems. There are words that are used in our everyday language that are made to work with the poems. This would be appropriate in the class room when you need to lift the spirits of the students in your classroom. This book will definatly make every student in your classroom laugh. I really enjoyed reading this book. Every poem made me laugh. I really felt like I was in a better mood after reading this book. The one thing that struck me as I read this books was how everything rhymed which made it easier to read and predict what word was going to be used next. Im not really sure how this book would relate to my life besides that this books is very funny much like me.

Yes, I did think this book was more or less complete nonsense. It was a type of humor I just don't appreciate. I do like a good limerick. "The limerick packs laughs anatomical / In space that is quite economical. / But the good ones I've seen / So seldom are clean / And the clean ones so seldom are comical." Edward's are clean, and the last line usually repeats the exact phrase of the first line like this: "There was an Old Man at a casement / Who held up his hands in amazement / When they said, 'Sir, you'll fall!' / He replied, 'Not at all!' / That incipient Old Man at a casement." Yawn. Lear's illustrations are what saved this book from a one star rating.

I have to admit I was going slightly bonkers after reading this but it was highly entertaining nonetheless. I loved Lear’s tendency to play with the juxtaposition of using strange, out-of-place, and made-up words alongside such formal, rigid poetic structure.