The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense by Edward Lear

The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense Reviews

• 
  Paul

  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.
• 
  Christine

  Well, he's not PC, but some of the poems are quite funny.
• 
  Morgan

  I like nonsense because sometimes it makes sense. I think the best thing about this book is they kept Mr. Lear's illustrations. My favorite poem is still Owl and the Pussycat, but found some others I liked too. I hope you like limericks because this book has a ton of limericks...maybe too many. I think fans of Dr. Seuss and Lewis Carroll would love this book too.
• 
  J. Mulrooney

  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.
• 
  Tania

  Good to dip into.
• 
  Rhys

  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.
• 
  Οδυσσέας Μουζίλης

  Ας πούμε και καμιά μπούρδα!
  
  
  https://pepperlines.blogspot.gr/2017/...
• 
  Sally

  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.
• 
  Ksenia Anske

  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.
• 
  Rick

  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.
• 
  Caleigh

  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.
• 
  Sarah

  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
• 
  Peter

  A fun read from everyones childhood although not recommended to be read in large bites.
• 
  Greg

  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.
  
• 
  Sarah

  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".
• 
  Barry

  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.
• 
  Edy Gies

  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!
• 
  Mercedes

  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.
• 
  JASON CUPP

  '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.
  
  
• 
  Amanda

  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.
• 
  Avis Black

  Lear's best poems are good; the problem is that there are so few of them among all the work he produced.
• 
  Sarah

  so far it is lovely. i especially enjoy his nonsense botany doodles and other artwork included!
• 
  Livy

  never againg like tree funny ones in the whole book
  
• 
  Wendy Meddour

  Lear - the master of nonsense. And I do love a bit of nonsense!
• 
  Steve Shilstone

  I bow to my 19th century mentor. 4 of his characters kindly visited the pages of my story, RAKARA.
• 
  Lyn Oates

  a book to return to again and again....always a smile
  
• 
  Steve Shilstone

  Among Mr. Lear's characters, I really do most sincerely appreciate Violet, Lionel, Guy, and Slingsby.
• 
  Adam Weber

  So much fun for anyone of any age.
• 
  Bruce

  Overall pretty good. I have to say though that the standards for what makes a good limerick have come a long way since Lear's time.