The limericks are the soul of his work. The other nonsense poems—The Pelican Chorus, The Owl and the Pussycat, etc—are good, as are the Alphabet poems, but the brevity and almost sensible absurdity of the limericks reign supreme.

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

Lear wrote in England in the late 1800s, and is the predecessor of much comedy and comic writing.

Reading his silly limericks, you can see what Roald Dahl and Monty Python grew out of. I remember some of these as a child, The Owl and the Pussycat, and this little gem

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared! --
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.

The edition I read had lots of drawings, which really pull it together. Some are simply silly - which was great fun.

Everyone needs a little nonsense and goofiness in his/her life. We all know a few good authors to go for that—Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Lewis Carroll. Before I️ picked up this book on a whim somewhere, I️ didn’t know Edward Lear belonged right alongside those other giants of fun and goofy children’s (and of course adults-who-haven’t-grown up) literature.

I started reading this at the beginning of the year with the intention of doing so by a page a day. The stories, rhymes, etc. are bite-sized so it was perfect for this kind of reading. And indeed I️ have more or less followed this practice since with great delight. It’s quite fun to have to start my day with a nonsensical rhyme rolling about in my head.

Great for kiddos. Great for adults who are actually kiddos.

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!

'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.'


' There was a Young Lady of Tyre
Who swept the loud chords of a lyre;
At the sound of each sweep
She enraptured the deep,
And enchanted the city of Tyre.'

This was another ‘lots of fun’ collection, to be read again and again, in part or in total.

So this book was what it promised. Little random poems and sketches, i didnt really find them funny but whatever.

The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear

In this work 288 pages spread over 5 books dealing with different subject matter relating to nonsense.

Interesting read in a well laid out and easily accessible book, relating to nonsense with a particularly interesting Victorian theme.

The reader would have to prepare themselves with an open mind, and arguably some patience, that taken the work is clearly quite delightful.

Oh, when will my Quangle-Wangle come? :(

*read for school

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.