Other editions of book A BOOK OF NONSENSE.

It is probably no surprise that Edward Lear felt the need to make children laugh. He was born in 1812 in North London, youngest-but-one of 21 children. Money problems led to his leaving home at the age of four with an older sister, who looked after him as a mother until she died. His health was always poor, and, while still young, he started suffering from depression, which he called "The Morbids". A professional artist, his failing eyesight caused him to switch from the detailed painting of birds to producing landscapes for travel books. He travelled widely and ended his life in Italy. He never married, and late in life relied for companionship on his cat, Foss, and on his Albanian chef, Giorgis - who was apparently a much better friend than a chef. The joy of Lear's Limericks - a form which he made popular - are his complete disregard for logic and his love of words - boldly inventing new ones if nothing better came to hand. An artist, a musician, a composer, a lover of poetry. It is a bitter-sweet thought that such a gifted man, who struggled to find happiness in his own life, leaves, as a legacy, a book to make children laugh. There was an Old Derry down Derry, Who loved to see little folks merry; So he made them a book, and with laughter they shook At the fun of that Derry down Derry.

Illustrated by Charles Folkard in color, with original drawings by Tenniel, Lear, Furniss, Holiday, Hughes, Sheppard and others. Anthologies of nonsense usually begin with Edward Lear, but, as the present collection shows, even the ancient Greeks did not always confine themselves to sense. A medieval nonsense poem leads the way to a selection of nonsense rhymes of varying dates-but it is almost as surprising to find Ben Jonson and Shakespeare in such a collection as it is to find Swift and Dr. Johnson. From their 'Age of Reason' come such famous examples of nonsense as the 'Grand Panjandrum' and original version of Baron Munchausen's adventures, besides several other poems and verses, and the early years of the nineteenth century have several unexpected representations.

History has produced no greater expert in the field of nonsense than Edward Lear, the beloved Victorian poet and illustrator whose books have charmed readers young and old for nearly two centuries now. A Book of Nonsense is the perfect example of Lear at his silliest: an exuberant collection of nonsense limericks peppered with Lear’s fantastic, bizarre, grotesque, and unforgettable illustrations. Reproduced here in a full-color facsimile edition, it reveals Lear’s imagination at its most winning, childlike, and fertile.

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularized.Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a poet's delight in the sounds of words, both real and imaginary. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a "diaphanous doorscraper". A "blue Boss-Woss" plunges into "a perpendicular, spicular, orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud". His heroes are Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. His most famous piece of verbal invention, a "runcible spoon" occurs in the closing lines of The Owl and the Pussycat, and is now found in many English dictionaries.

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularized.Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a poet's delight in the sounds of words, both real and imaginary. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a "diaphanous doorscraper". A "blue Boss-Woss" plunges into "a perpendicular, spicular, orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud". His heroes are Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. His most famous piece of verbal invention, a "runcible spoon" occurs in the closing lines of The Owl and the Pussycat, and is now found in many English dictionaries.

Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularized. Lear's nonsense works are distinguished by a facility of verbal invention and a poet's delight in the sounds of words, both real and imaginary. A stuffed rhinoceros becomes a "diaphanous doorscraper". A "blue Boss-Woss" plunges into "a perpendicular, spicular, orbicular, quadrangular, circular depth of soft mud". His heroes are Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles, and Jumblies. His most famous piece of verbal invention, a "runcible spoon" occurs in the closing lines of The Owl and the Pussycat, and is now found in many English dictionaries.