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Nonsense Books #1-4
The Complete Nonsense and Other Verse
'Nonsense is the breath of my nostrils', wrote Edward Lear (1812-88), and this collection demonstrates the wonderfully varied ways in which he pursued his philosophy of life. He created an extraordinary world filled with bizarre creatures - from the Dong with a luminous nose to the Pobble who has no toes - who misbehave with joyful abandon. Here can be found such exuberant and timeless verse as 'The Owl and the Pussy-cat', 'The Quangle Wangle's Hat' and numerous comic limericks, along with stories, letters, alphabets and recipes, all accompanied throughout with his fantastical line drawings. Gently pointing out human follies and the absurdities of the conventional Victorian society in which he lived, Lear's nonsense has enchanted children and adults alike for generations.
615 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1894
22 people are currently reading
1098 people want to read
About the author
Edward Lear
755 books206 followersEdward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.
His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to make illustrations of birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems.
As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.
His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to make illustrations of birds and animals; making coloured drawings during his journeys, which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books; and as a (minor) illustrator of Alfred Tennyson's poems.
As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
November 19, 2020
The compilers of this book have done their upmost to include every scrap of Lear’s written work (and some of his cartoons). As such, while most of this book is wonderful and whimsical as you’d expect from Lear, there’s some rubbish in here too. It is nice to have it all, though.
There are extensive notes in the appendices, which should satisfy Lear scholars. I can’t help but think the man himself would be horrified to see his work dissected and pored over microscopically like this, though.
There are extensive notes in the appendices, which should satisfy Lear scholars. I can’t help but think the man himself would be horrified to see his work dissected and pored over microscopically like this, though.
August 22, 2016
Well, he's not PC, but some of the poems are quite funny.
October 14, 2014
The inventor of the limerick. In fact, his limericks are disappointing, not because they're rated G (they are), but because the last line is always a repeat of the first line. The one about the girl from Nantucket gives you a punch line instead of repeat. A little more vim that way.
Best known for The Owl and The PussyCat, Lear is at his best when he is that rarest of things, funny and sad at the same time. The Jumblies, The Dong with the Luminous Nose, The Pelican Chorus, are all heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time they are goofy childish fun.
Unlike Dr Seuss, who is superficially delightful but brutal to read night after night to cribsfulls of rabid infants, Lear remains fun to read. There's something lovely about a group of 2-5 year olds chanting along:
Far and few, far and few
Are the lands where the Jumblies live
Their heads are green, their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve.
Highly recommended.
An update to this review:
I should mention, there is a lot of stuff in here that is not terribly interesting. A few of the limericks go a long way, and there's a lot of cutesy stuff that maybe worked 130 years ago in England that just seems like drivel now. The way to read this is to find the ballads, which are terrific.
Best known for The Owl and The PussyCat, Lear is at his best when he is that rarest of things, funny and sad at the same time. The Jumblies, The Dong with the Luminous Nose, The Pelican Chorus, are all heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time they are goofy childish fun.
Unlike Dr Seuss, who is superficially delightful but brutal to read night after night to cribsfulls of rabid infants, Lear remains fun to read. There's something lovely about a group of 2-5 year olds chanting along:
Far and few, far and few
Are the lands where the Jumblies live
Their heads are green, their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve.
Highly recommended.
An update to this review:
I should mention, there is a lot of stuff in here that is not terribly interesting. A few of the limericks go a long way, and there's a lot of cutesy stuff that maybe worked 130 years ago in England that just seems like drivel now. The way to read this is to find the ballads, which are terrific.
June 4, 2019
Magnificent and very silly. The early poems are weak. This is because Lear hadn't yet found his true path in life. Gradually the poems become dafter and dafter and better and better. The limericks aren't so great individually but there are so many of them that they build up into a strange unstoppable gestalt force of utterly pointless fun. His best work tends to be his longer nonsense songs, 'The Owl and the Puss-Cat', obviously, and 'The Jumblies', 'Mr and Mrs Discobobolos', etc. But I was also very impressed with his prose story about the children who sailed round the world. Extremely inventive and blatantly ridiculous.
June 15, 2019
Good to dip into.
May 8, 2023
Blah, this was such a great disappointment overall. I will admit that there were a couple of things I enjoyed, but this book is VERY long and most of it was not very good, IMO. The part I did like was his section about riding horses with drawings; it helped that what he wrote was typed as text, but when I searched online to find a good photo I couldn't find the ones I liked better. It helps that I grew up in a rural area where some people had horses so I've actually been on them, even if it was with western saddles and not British like the ones in his drawings.
This book was full of stories, letters, poetry and other sorts of writing, including far too many limericks where he never once found three words that rhymed which usually makes them worse.
There once was a poet named Lear
Whose limericks all made me sneer
He set them up wrong
All his life long
They were worse that this one I wrote here.
Had I not been reading this for several challenges, one of which would penalize me if I didn't finish this book, I'd have dropped this early on. I realize that it's very hard to come up with good limericks, but honestly why print them if they aren't good? Thankfully the majority of the book wasn't limericks, but at times it sure felt like it.
Lear painted well, and could draw well, but I did NOT like his cartooning at all. Even the horse ones, but of course the jokes all worked well for me. Most of this book is text, but there are some small renditions of cartoons as well.
This book was full of stories, letters, poetry and other sorts of writing, including far too many limericks where he never once found three words that rhymed which usually makes them worse.
There once was a poet named Lear
Whose limericks all made me sneer
He set them up wrong
All his life long
They were worse that this one I wrote here.
Had I not been reading this for several challenges, one of which would penalize me if I didn't finish this book, I'd have dropped this early on. I realize that it's very hard to come up with good limericks, but honestly why print them if they aren't good? Thankfully the majority of the book wasn't limericks, but at times it sure felt like it.
Lear painted well, and could draw well, but I did NOT like his cartooning at all. Even the horse ones, but of course the jokes all worked well for me. Most of this book is text, but there are some small renditions of cartoons as well.
February 10, 2011
I had fond memories of memorising poems by Edward Lear at school but obviously they picked out the best ones for us. En masse I found his work tiresome, there are pages and pages of limericks that are virtually the same and his alphabets are not much better.
It was interesting to learn a little more about his life. I didn't know he was the 20th child! He was also a talented artist and was drawing master to Queen Victoria. There are a couple of coloured plates included in the book of his nature drawings which are just brilliant. His skill at painting birds was said to rival that of Audubon. I think I would rather see a book of his art than his collected writings.
It was interesting to learn a little more about his life. I didn't know he was the 20th child! He was also a talented artist and was drawing master to Queen Victoria. There are a couple of coloured plates included in the book of his nature drawings which are just brilliant. His skill at painting birds was said to rival that of Audubon. I think I would rather see a book of his art than his collected writings.
November 23, 2017
Ας πούμε και καμιά μπούρδα!
https://pepperlines.blogspot.gr/2017/...
https://pepperlines.blogspot.gr/2017/...
March 19, 2008
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.
November 26, 2015
If your children have a taste for macabre, buy it for them and read it together and draw it. See if you can out-wild and out-silly the author.
February 16, 2024
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
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
February 9, 2019
Delightful and comprehensive, best read in small doses so as not to ruin with excess the fun, this anthology of Lear illustrated poems, limericks, letters, alphabets, strange botanies, and other entertainments by the naturalist, landscape artist, and inspired traveler is a treat for the ages.
Many of us got our first introduction to poetry through Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat and can likely recite the beginning verse, if not more. There are also The Jumblies (“They went to sea in a Sieve, they did, / In a Sieve they went to sea: / In spite of all their friends could say, / In a Sieve they went to sea!”), “The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple,” The Scroobious Pip, The Dong with a Luminous Nose, and more stories and poems, light and dark, filled with puns and nonsense words, and strange places and stranger characters, sometimes including a certain Mr. Lear himself.
Lear is great, as they say, for children of all ages, including this sixty-five year old toddler.
Many of us got our first introduction to poetry through Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat and can likely recite the beginning verse, if not more. There are also The Jumblies (“They went to sea in a Sieve, they did, / In a Sieve they went to sea: / In spite of all their friends could say, / In a Sieve they went to sea!”), “The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple,” The Scroobious Pip, The Dong with a Luminous Nose, and more stories and poems, light and dark, filled with puns and nonsense words, and strange places and stranger characters, sometimes including a certain Mr. Lear himself.
Lear is great, as they say, for children of all ages, including this sixty-five year old toddler.
March 11, 2022
I understand that these rhymes and stories are significant because they broke the mold and essentially created a new form. However it's hard to get past the fact that they are just not very good. The limericks lack the punch lines that we are used to today, so really all that can be said of them is that they rhyme. I understand that they are supposed to be nonsense, and certainly they are that, but I expected to be more amused. I guess I will stick to Alligator Pie.
May 20, 2018
Brilliantly nonsensical poetry - loved Lear's work as a child with the Owl and the Pussy cat - loved going back to look more closely at the meaning behind the nonsense
December 9, 2018
A fun read from everyones childhood although not recommended to be read in large bites.
Currently reading
August 26, 2023alpha - I've come across some of Lear's illustrations in other books. I think I wanted more chaos & insanity, but this is more like nursery rhymes. Not bad, but not what I'm after.
Read
July 12, 2024Very complete. Sketches by Lear are included along with his verse and alphabets, etc.
April 10, 2012
Lear’s compendium of small jokes and assorted nonsense is delightfully funny, and anticipated the comedy of countless generations that depend on the ridiculous. He sums up this philosophy in a quote to be found in the wonderfully written introduction to this volume: ‘Nonsense is the breath of my nostrils’, he wrote. It is a philosophy as much as a genre. For him it was a response to ‘this ludicrously whirligig life which one suffers from first & laughs at afterwards’. Lear himself was not blessed with an easy life, and his comedy offered him a way out. Such limerick’s as the following that I could not help but linking with the current state of the UN prove the point:
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.
However, underneath the nonsense there is a great poet. Verses such as the following from the “Growling Eclogue” offer wonderful imagery:
Last week I called aloud, O! O! O! O!
The ground is wholly overspread with snow!
Is that at any rate a theme for mirth
Which makes a sugar-cake of all the earth?
His best, though, are his honest and heartfelt poems of disappointment. Among these, read ‘When the light dies away on a calm summer’s eve’, ‘The gloom that winter casts’, and ‘O dear! How disgusting is life!’. Their beauty can be found in such lines as the following from “Miss Maniac” – “And felt how doubly keen it is to mourn – and mourn alone!”.
This is a serious volume. It should be read for its mirth, as well as for the fantastic poet to be found hiding underneath the nonsense.
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.
However, underneath the nonsense there is a great poet. Verses such as the following from the “Growling Eclogue” offer wonderful imagery:
Last week I called aloud, O! O! O! O!
The ground is wholly overspread with snow!
Is that at any rate a theme for mirth
Which makes a sugar-cake of all the earth?
His best, though, are his honest and heartfelt poems of disappointment. Among these, read ‘When the light dies away on a calm summer’s eve’, ‘The gloom that winter casts’, and ‘O dear! How disgusting is life!’. Their beauty can be found in such lines as the following from “Miss Maniac” – “And felt how doubly keen it is to mourn – and mourn alone!”.
This is a serious volume. It should be read for its mirth, as well as for the fantastic poet to be found hiding underneath the nonsense.
January 23, 2015
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."
-"The Self-portrait of the Laureate of Nonsense"
Yes, how pleasant to know Mr. Lear, indeed! This collection contains the poems that made Edward Lear famous, which are complete and utter nonsense, as he himself praises. Truly, this stuff makes absolutely zero sense. It is Victorian gobbledygook at its finest, although I fail to think of anybody else that does what Lear does in such a ridiculous manner. Even by today's standards, it's weird. But you know what? Lear praised himself on being weird, and that is a great quality. So the poems themselves are therefore of equal quality in my mind. Honestly, I cannot even imagine how the man came up with this stuff, but regardless, it's great nursery-rhyme material, because all nursery rhymes are gobbledygook!
As a final note, I bet a million dollars that Edward Lear's favorite color was "pea-green".
Who has written such volumes of stuff!
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough."
-"The Self-portrait of the Laureate of Nonsense"
Yes, how pleasant to know Mr. Lear, indeed! This collection contains the poems that made Edward Lear famous, which are complete and utter nonsense, as he himself praises. Truly, this stuff makes absolutely zero sense. It is Victorian gobbledygook at its finest, although I fail to think of anybody else that does what Lear does in such a ridiculous manner. Even by today's standards, it's weird. But you know what? Lear praised himself on being weird, and that is a great quality. So the poems themselves are therefore of equal quality in my mind. Honestly, I cannot even imagine how the man came up with this stuff, but regardless, it's great nursery-rhyme material, because all nursery rhymes are gobbledygook!
As a final note, I bet a million dollars that Edward Lear's favorite color was "pea-green".
November 7, 2007
The 2004 theatrical release of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy set the literary world on its ear and in search of landmark absurdum. Less ponderous than Lewis Carroll and easier to read than James Joyce, the Victorian illustrator, writer, and yes, absurdist, Edward Lear (1812-1888) fit the bill for many. Fortunately Lear's "The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense" collects nearly all of Lear's output, including his published works, letters and many drawings.
Lear will strike the reader as hilarious fun or insipid drivel depending on the mood in which they encounter him. I admit he is best in small doses, and then, perhaps at bedtime after reading something heavier.
A random limerick:
There was an Old Person of Jodd
Whose ways were perplexing and odd;
She purchased a whistle, and sate on a thistle,
And squeaked to the people of Jodd.
Lear will strike the reader as hilarious fun or insipid drivel depending on the mood in which they encounter him. I admit he is best in small doses, and then, perhaps at bedtime after reading something heavier.
A random limerick:
There was an Old Person of Jodd
Whose ways were perplexing and odd;
She purchased a whistle, and sate on a thistle,
And squeaked to the people of Jodd.
September 26, 2015
Oh this book! This book holds great sentimental value to me because my family has been reading it for four generations. I read it to Logan, my dad read it to my siblings and I, my grandfather read it to my dad, and my great-grandfather dad read it to my grandfather. The pure silliness is just fabulous! It is especially great considering that children's literature was not a big genera like it is today. I would have loved to meet Leer because he is so crazy and imaginative. I can only imagine what a talk with him would be like!
August 13, 2012
Lear is a master of the limerick and humorous poetry. My dad bought an older edition for us when we were kids and I was brought up on these nonsense rhymes and strange but endearingly funny illustrations. "The Owl and the Pussycat" will always have a special place in my heart because my grandma would recite it to me with a grin shortly after singing Eidelweiss or some other song. It's really no surprise that Lear was an inspiration to so many.
October 16, 2008
'the owl and the pussycat' will always be a favorite. you can probably skip the limericks; although they were made popular by lear, his re-use of the first line as the last line keeps the nonsense from becoming clever.
September 19, 2014
Had this book as a child aged about 8. Loved it. Would read it again and again. I can still remember some of the lines from certain poems like the Jumblies. My edition had beautiful illustrations too.
November 12, 2020
Lear's best poems are good; the problem is that there are so few of them among all the work he produced.
Want to read
October 31, 2008so far it is lovely. i especially enjoy his nonsense botany doodles and other artwork included!
December 16, 2010
never againg like tree funny ones in the whole book
March 4, 2012
Lear - the master of nonsense. And I do love a bit of nonsense!
September 1, 2012
I bow to my 19th century mentor. 4 of his characters kindly visited the pages of my story, RAKARA.
September 8, 2012
a book to return to again and again....always a smile
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews