Lear's Nonsense Omnibus: With All the Original Pictures, Verses, and Stories

by Edward Lear, E. Strachey (Introduction)

A collection of Lear's nonsense songs, stories, rhymes, alphabets, and pictures taken from "Nonsense Songs and Stories, " "Nonsense Botany, " and "Nonsense Alphabets."

Genres: Poetry, Childrens, British Literature, Humor

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

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

[Leonardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eccentric and humorous, this colleciton of limericks and other delightful examples of nonsense poetry and short stories opens a window into the world of English illustrator and poet Edward Lear, who presents for the reader a collection of most peculiar characters, strange travels into stranger lands, and even a couple of nonsense alphabets. Of course, one of the great delights in Lear's work is how the seemingly innocent text are entagled with the playful and disturbing illustration by the author himself. As with all nonsense literature, this texts allow the sound of words to shine through, whether or not they make sense. However, it also opens the doors to rather creepy undertones that will worry contemporary sensitivities, but that will delight fans of other writers who mix a weird innocence with playfully morbidity, such as Edward Gorey and Tim Burton.

[Ella · Rating 5 out of 5]

It duscusssed pressing matters of our susiety in great amounts of detail :pensive: I looked upon its holy pages and realized that in fact I was a duck riding the capitalism tail of kangaroo while the jumblies looked on. It was quite the scroobius moment for me.

[Onur · Rating 3 out of 5]

in the place of “the broom, the shovel, the poker and the tongs”

[LitMom · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a young lady from Venezuela
Who wished to sit and rest for a spell-a;
She took a short break
For her own little sake,
Which she liked, that dear lady of Venezuela.

O.K., a little of this goes a long way. In fact, my long-suffering husband asked me to cease and desist from reading this upon a third consecutive lunch reading. Still
. . . fun in it's own way . . . at long intervals.

[Joel Punwani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weekend Extra Credit

The majority of this book is made of limericks, followed by various odds and ends, most notably stories. Classics such as "The Owl and the Pussycat" sit literally right next to more obscure poems such as "The Duck and the Kangaroo"--and I'm not even making that one up. Highly recommended for children ages 4-9, or those who can still think that way when they need to.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is So brilliant it makes you laugh out loud. a great read for adults and kids alike