The Jumblies and Other Nonsense Verse

by Edward Lear

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Humor, Classics

Paperback

Published October 20, 1995

About the author

Edward 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.

Reviews

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fun book of verses.

[Kaethe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for "The Scroobious Pip" and downloaded this book. Didn't find it here. But, I do enjoy reading light verse and wish more writers today would tackle it.

Actually, I suppose many do, but it all gets published as picture books for children, which is fine, but I miss authors writing silly poetry for adults.

There are rather a lot of odd marriages. I don't think that tells the reader anything in particular about Lear, but it's interesting to see.

[Dodo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wonderful witty wee booklet is certainly a Must. I won`t even start to describe it, as the book is hardly describable. One simply has to read it. Funnily absurd, absurdly funny? Anyway, it`s fun!

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic stuff.

[Erika Altensee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love!

Revisiting these poems brings fond memories of cozy evenings with my grandparents reading and giggling and appreciating the simple absurdities of our beautiful language.

[Firefox · Rating 4 out of 5]

The yonghy Bomghy bo turned out to be really sad when I heard it on YouTube.

[Matt Falcone]

The Jumblies and Other Nonsense Verses is a collection of verses written by Edward Lear. The title may give it away but the poems in this book are exactly that; Nonsense! There’s some wonderful poems in it that stand out to me including the love story of The Owl and The Pussy-Cat as they go to get married with a ring from a pig. There’s also The Broom, The Shovel, The Poker, and The Tongs which is a group of friends (I could be wrong here) that go for a ride in the park. The book is just filled with nonsense poems with each one more ridiculous than the other. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it could be read with any of the grades 3-6.

I would use this book in my reading class. There’s a ton of good figurative language use and it would be a great way to introduce students to it. There’s a lot of personification and this would give students practice with dealing with it in a funny way! It could also be used in a music class as one of the poems has a song that goes along with it.

That being said, this book is a WOW book for me not because of the Owl and Pussy-Catt and not because of the Friends on a drive, but the last poem in the book which I can only describe as a mixture of a sea chantey and folk song combination. It’s this amazing poem called Yonghy Bongy Bo and there’s a song that goes along with it. It is a masterpiece of complete nonsense about a man who meets his wife. It’s a very weird but comedic piece that had me feeling very ambivalent as it went along but now I’ve taken it as my new favorite thing! This book was amazing and I would recommend it to anyone!

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every once in a while I like to cheer myself up with some poetry picture book for children. What I liked about this book is how well the art complimented the verses. Some of these verses, though, I found hard to understand in terms of cultural differences, so I assume they'd be most suitable for English native speakers.
A lot of imagination and somewhat random rhyming elements combined for the sake of rhyme and nonsense, but I enjoyed that.
At times some parts of the poems even seemed a bit creepy or overly cruel, but maybe that was just me, I can't tell. It does make the book more complete, I feel.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poems are complete nonsense but they are still fun and cute. The pictures are great.

[Annie Bradburn]

I loved it. The poems were funny, some were a bit long.

[clodagh kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

wholesome

[David Hinkley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Traditional Delightful Babble

This is such fun. Enjoy a trip into childhood imagination and fantasy. No matter how old you are a smile or three are bound to cross your path. Whether you put on a suit and go to an office building you can always escape by going to sea in a sieve.