Excellent book.

C'è tutto in questo libro: il senso del nonsenso e il nonsenso del senso. Non è un gioco di parole, ma una sfida a capire.

Should have read it when I was younger.

The Owl and the Pussycat is great. Someof the rest may be as well, but reading the whole book got to be pretty tedious. So repetitive...

I stumbled on a book of Edward Lear limericks when I was in grade school, and I was like, these are completely pointless, but I couldn't put them down. For a while, I became obsessed with writing my own limericks - I submitted many to the school paper, and they were turned down, essentially because they were too pointless. I've since spent much of my life trying, and largely failing, to find a point. And so it was with great enjoyment that I picked this up after many Learless decades and reminded myself that, yes, there is a point to pointlessness. Or rather, there isn't, but that's the entire point. Either way: hooray!

"Here is every line of every nonsense book written by Edward Lear. In a single volume you get 'A Book of Nonsense,' 'Nonsense Songs,' 'More Nonsense Songs,' 'Laughable Lyrics,' and 'Nonsense Songs and Stories.' No other lo9w-price edition offers this complete collection.

...

"It has been a hundred years since Edward Lear, the advocate of illogic, first became known to a wide public. Children who begged to have his verses read to them have grown up to read Lear to their own children -- and to discover that his whimsy, imagination, and originality have their attractions for the adult mind as well."
~~back cover

I mixed up Norman Lear with Edward Lear, and it was the former I wanted to read. The humor and whimsy of the latter aren't my cuppa, unfortunately.

It's a classic, and it's brilliant

I read The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear over the course of roughly six months. On most mornings I read just two pages. I think this is a good way to read Edward Lear -- if you read it all at once, you would quickly surfeit on it. But at two pages a day it remains fresh. Until I read this, I didn't realize how much of Lear's work I already knew. Many of the poems were familiar, for instance, "The Owl and the Pussycat". And much of it is brilliant.

Much of it is NOT brilliant -- let me be clear about that. The limericks that occupy so much of the book are formulaic and become tiresome, even at the pace of two pages (typically four limericks) a day. The poems in which he tells little stories, e.g. the aforementioned "Owl and the Pussycat" or "The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Around the World", are the best.

My five-star rating is based on a principle -- that an artist should be judged by his best work. Judged this way, it is fair to say that Lear is brilliant, and quite unique.

Blog review.

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.

The book starts with a “Self-Portrait of the Laureate”:

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

I liked that and thought that reading him would be pleasant enough. It was not. Nothing that follows comes close to the self portrait. Now, humour ages badly in general. But in this case, with most of the poems I could not even imagine what might have appealed to readers of previous generations.

Lear is known for having more or less invented the art of limericks. But all his limericks are missing the punch line. I feel cheated. This is unfair, of course, but as they are they are just not funny.

(Morgenstern even in translation has at least a couple of poems that one could still read with pleasure.)

Sometimes is funny with all the rhymes and old stuff, but most of the topics not related to my personal life (more into not relatable to 2010s jokes). But good and inspiring illustrations

What nonsense, with just a few chuckles. Best suited for younger children with broad vocabularies.

The drawings (especially the nonsense botany) and the songs (e.g., The Owl and the Pussy-Cat) are Lear's best stuff. Many of the limericks are painful. I shouldn't have been surprised by this, but my 4-year-old, when she listened, enjoyed Lear more than I did. Also, if you didn't know that Lear's primary work was drawing birds for ornithology books, please take a few minutes to check out that stuff. It's amazing.