Nonsense Books

This gathering of Edward Lear’s nonsense brings together his limericks, songs, alphabets, and comic drawings into one cheerfully absurd volume. Here are the verses that shaped English children’s poetry, among them ‘The Owl and the Pussy-cat’ setting sail in their pea-green boat, the seafaring Jumblies, and the Pobble who has no toes. Lear pairs each rhyme with his own scratchy, funny illustrations, and his invented words and creatures delight readers who never quite outgrow them. Though he wrote to amuse the children of his patrons, the poems carry a gentle melancholy that adults notice too. First appearing in the 1840s and expanded over the decades that followed, these pieces made the limerick famous and set Lear beside Lewis Carroll as a master of literary nonsense. Free to read in PDF and EPUB.