| Title | : | The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 089190090X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780891900900 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 287 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1895 |
This edition, illustrated by the author, contains all the verse and stories of the Book of Nonsense, More Nonsense, Nonsense Songs, Nonsense Stories, Nonsense Alphabets and Nonsense Cookery. It has a biographical Preface by Lear himself, and concludes with some delightful 'heraldic' sketches of his cat, Foss.
The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear Reviews
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A collection of the nonsense writings of prolific Victorian artist and author Edward Lear. Lear’s wonderful brand of absurdism, his arresting artwork, his skill and playfulness with words, have made him an iconic figure for a host of writers from Eley Williams and John Ashbery to Donald Barthelme, Edward Gorey, and W. H. Auden. Lear’s unique blend of quirk, whimsy and strange melancholy, has been part of my literary landscape since I was really young, and ever since lines and images from his nonsense songs have a tendency to suddenly pop up in my head: the Jumblies with their blue hands and green heads, the vast hat of the Quangle Wangle. But now I’m not so sure Lear’s work’s well suited to child readers, despite his marvellously eccentric alphabets and furiously comical images, there’s a vein of deep, almost unbearable, sadness that surfaces from time to time, as in my favourite song, the haunting tale of longing and thwarted desire “The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.” It’s a song so weighed down with intense emotions that I found it difficult to deal with when I first encountered it. Revisiting these as an adult it’s hard not to wonder how much the overwhelming loneliness, the sense of futility that pervades characters like the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo reflects Lear’s own experiences and inner world: almost certainly queer but without a means of embracing that; grappling with long-term illness, and endless money worries. Lear’s most intimate friendship seems to have been with his beloved cat Fop - who features here in a series of beguiling sketches. I still love his work in all its forms, it’s not uniformly great but when it succeeds, I think it’s pure genius.
Victober 2022 Challenge - poetry -
[italiano in fondo (con una mia traduzione-reinvenzione)]
What we have here? «Innocent Mirth» - as the author said? Oh no...
We have Fun!
and Despair!
and Descriptions of the Human Condition!
and Lessons in Good Taste!
And Val d'Aosta Cows!
Fun:
There was an Old Man of Moldavia
Who had the most curious behaviour;
For while he was able
He slept on a table,
That funny Old Man of Moldavia.
Despair:
There was an Old Man of Cape Horn,
who wished he had never been born:
so he sat on a chair
till he died of despair
that dolorous Man of Cape Horn.
Existentialism:
There was an Old Man who said, “Well!
Will nobody answer this bell?
I have pulled day and night,
Till my hair has grown white,
But nobody answers this bell!
Refined Models of Living:
There was a Young Lady of Corsica,
Who purchased a little brown Saucy-cur;
Which she fed upon Ham
And hot Raspberry Jam,
That expensive Young Lady of Corsica.
Mucche della Val d'Aosta:
There was an Old Man of Aosta,
Who possessed a large cow, but he lost her;
but they said: “Don’t you see
She has rushed up a tree?
You invidious Old Man of Aosta!”
...And much more
(volevo continuare a leggere bevendo senza sosta una bevanda dal gusto effervescente:
ma costava un puttanaio
quel chinotto dal lattaio!)
l'annunciata traduzione-reinvenzione:
Una giovane donna di Corsica
comperò un cagnetto che morsica:
lo nutriva a prosciutto,
marmellata con strutto.
Spendacciona, la donna di Corsica! -
This children's book is composed of 4 originally-released as individual separate books:
(1) A Book of Nonsense (1846) - composed of several funny 4-line 1-stanza poems accompanying hilarious pictures
The following are my favorites:
(2) Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871) - composed of longer poems, several short outrageously funny stories, pictures of out-of-this-world plants and alphabets whose individual letters are accompanied with silly meanings.
(3) More Nonsense Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, etc. (1872) - basically the same as #2
(4) Laughable Lyrics: A Fresh Book of Nonsense Poems, Songs, Botany, etc. (1877) - more of poems and they are supposed to be sung but I don't recognize any of them.
Nonsense Rhyme:There was an Old Man who said, "Well!
Nonsense Song:"The Owl and the Pussycat" for their love affair and the lines: "O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love, / What a beautiful Pussy you are, / You are, / You are! / What a beautiful Pussy you are!" There is also the poem (song) entitled "The Daddy Long-Legs and the Fly" and it struck me because I know there is a children's book about Daddy Long-Legs. So, that one came from this work by Edward Lear?
Will nobody answer this bell?
I have pulled day and night, till my hair has grown white,
But nobody answers this bell!"
Nonsense Story: "The History of the Seven Families of the Lake Pipple-Popple" is my favorite because it is easier to read and has more funny pictures. "The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Around the World" is also nice and it felt related to what Edward Lear dreamed when he was still alive: go around the world. Even if this is a children's book, you can still see how the poems and stories are actually based on the author's thoughts, experiences and even dreams.
John Ruskin, author of The King of the Golden River, also a very recent read, has this to say about this book: "Surely the most beneficent and innocent of all books yet produced is the "Book of Nonsense," with its corollary carols, inimitable and refreshing, and perfect in rhythm. I really don't know any author to whom I am half so grateful for my idle self as Edward Lear. I shall put him first of my hundred authors." Coming from an author who wrote a nice novel about wind toppling the vicious brothers and some kind of powerful hermit-king turning the river into gold, adds credibility to this book. This is a nice funny book especially if you have nothing to do and you just want to enjoy simple poems with rhymes that you normally see posted on the kindergarten room's walls.
Edward Lear (1812-1888) was an English artist, illustrator, author and poet, and is renowned primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised. So, there is really a genre or sub-genre for literary nonsense. Cool, I have at least one book friends who always talks nonsense but he is funny. We don't always want to be serious, right? Besides, it is easier and more enjoyable and more beneficial to health if we laugh more in between serious matters.
What is also noteworthy here is the genius of Edward Lear as an illustrator. Brilliant. Even if the figures were more than a century old, they still look fresh as if they were conceptualized by Lear only yesterday. -
I love the poem where he introduces himself! From memory:
How pleasant to know Mr Lear!
Who has written such masses of stuff
Some think him ill-tempered and queer
But a few find him pleasant enough.
He sits in a beautiful parlour
With hundreds of books on the wall
He drinks quite a lot of Marsala
But never gets tipsy at all.
He has many friends, laymen and clerical
Old Foss is the name of his cat
His body is perfectly spherical
He weareth a runcible hat.
He reads, but he cannot speak, Spanish
He cannot abide ginger beer
Ere the years of his pilgrimage vanish
How pleasant to know Mr Lear! -
Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13650...
"By day we fish, and at eve we stand
On long bare islands of yellow sand.
And when the sun sinks slowly down,
And the great rock-walls grow dark and brown,
When the purple river rolls fast and dim,
And the ivory Ibis starlike skim,
Wing to wing we dance around
- from The Pelican Chorus -
I cannot stress enough how horrible the limericks are. They often have extra syllables that mess up the rhythm, and often rhyme only because they repeat words. However, they, like all the other poems and stories, are accompanied by the authors own entertaining sketches, so I can almost forgive them.
The other songs and stories are wonderful enough that I'll just ignore the limericks.
Content warnings:
* Inter-species marriage.
* A husband refers to his wife as "Oh lovely Pussy, oh Pussy my love, what a wonderful Pussy you are..."
* A very nice rhinoceros is killed and stuffed just so he can be used as a "diaphanous door-scraper".
Many different collections are currently lumped together by the goodreads librarians. They'll probably never be fully straitened out. Here is the contents of the version I read:
The Book of Nonsense - Horrible limericks.
Nonsense Songs and Stories - Wonderful poems and one story (The four little children who went around the world).
100 Nonsense Pictures and Rhymes - More horrible limericks.
An Alphabet - An OK way to teach kids the alphabet, and words like Dolomphious and Runcible.
"How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear" - An OK poem. -
Throughout my idea of Lear was a Children's Limerick writer! From what I had read about his life, that made sense. He wrote those five-lines rhyming poems for the children of his patron Edward Stanley, the 13th Earl of Derby. After reading this compilation, that view of mine changed considerably! This book has the following parts and along with the reactions are listed under :
1. A Book of Nonsense - √ :) :D
(Ha-ha-ha!!!)
I had read this volume earlier separately and its a joyride. Funny! A nice book for children and adults alike. By following the rhymes, you can also learn about certain pronunciations you did wrong earlier by rhyming along.
2. More Nonsense - √ :D :)
(More ha-ha-ha!!!)
Funny, weird and funny! His neologisms (words not accepted in mainstream literature, but have some popular use of various kinds) are amazing to read aloud, and today many are dictionary words!
3. Nonsense songs - √ :) :D
(Ha-ha-ha. :\ What?!? Oh! Ha!)
I was a fan of Jumblies and their sieve for quite some time. And they along with Quangle-Wangles, Pobbles are Lear's reappearing heroes. Lear's nonsense songs were once so famous that some phrases became a part of mainstream literature expressions. An example is the "Owl and the Pussy Cat" 's 'runcible spoon'!
"They dined on mince, and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon."
But not all the as nonsensical as the poems. Some are based on "reductio ad absurdum" (reduction to absurdity) where an argument disproves a statement by showing its compulsive absurd conclusion.
4. Nonsense stories and alphabets - √ :) :D
(The first story is okay : typical Lear. BUT the second : Really disturbing!
The parents teach children not to so some things, which they do and all the children of seven families die in weird ways. Perhaps the motivation was to teach the children a lesson of how important it it to listen to parents. But this way seems strange. And then the parents stave themselves and make a pickle of themselves and are now kept in a museum!!!
What was Lear thinking writing these?
They are nonsensical sure, as promised but the sense of humor is very dark and not at all suited for children. It will be disturbing to them, as per myself.
This broke my perception of Lear!
5. Nonsense alphabets - √ :) :D
(Perfect for teaching infants!)
6. Nonsense cookery - √ :) :D
(What does he mean? :P )
7. The Heraldic Blazon of Foss the Cat - √ :) :D
(Hail Foss! _/\_ )
In this collection, the type of humor ranges from typical silly, children's to really dark humor. The range I had imagined Lear was set in has been made vast considerably after reading this collection. The variety presented in this particular genre is phenomenal. It is a really good read for limerick lovers and Lear fans.
I give Complete Nonsense by Edward Lear 4 stars! :)
Happy reading! :)
For more such reviews visit :
http://dbthetablesareturned.blogspot.in/ -
The book starts with a “Self-Portrait of the Laureate”:
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.
I liked that and thought that reading him would be pleasant enough. It was not. Nothing that follows comes close to the self portrait. Now, humour ages badly in general. But in this case, with most of the poems I could not even imagine what might have appealed to readers of previous generations.
Lear is known for having more or less invented the art of limericks. But all his limericks are missing the punch line. I feel cheated. This is unfair, of course, but as they are they are just not funny.
(Morgenstern even in translation has at least a couple of poems that one could still read with pleasure.) -
There was a young reader from Pittsburgh
Who read this weird book full of quirk
It got old so fast, she wanted to blast
That silly young reader from Pittsburgh -
I have to admit I was going slightly bonkers after reading this but it was highly entertaining nonetheless. I loved Lear’s tendency to play with the juxtaposition of using strange, out-of-place, and made-up words alongside such formal, rigid poetic structure.
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An entertaining and eclectic read. So full of fun and wonder, and most of all "nonsense" ;)
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Should have read it when I was younger.
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หลังจากเราบังเอิญได้่อ่าน The owl and the pussy cat แล้วเราก็ไม่สามารถ move on จากกลอน limerick ของ Edward Lear ได้ จึงตามหาหนังสือเล่มนี้มาอ่าน
The Nonsense books เล่มนี้ เราซื้อมาจาก amazon (อันที่จริงมีแบบ public domain ที่สามารถเปิดให้อ่านฟรีได้ แต่ด้วยความที่พอโหลดมาแล้วบางหน้าแสดงบนไม่ค่อยดีบน kindle เราจึงเสาะหาจนเจอเล่มนี้ที่รูปแบบอ่านง่ายและราคาไม่แพง)
The complete collection เป็นการรวมเอาหนังสือ 4 เล่มเข้าด้วยกัน หลัก ๆ จะประกอบด้วยกลอน limerick ประกอบภาพวาด ซึ่งบอกเลยว่าเสน่ห์ของเล่มอยู่ตรงนี้
สำหรับเราคิดว่ามันไม่เชิงเหมาะกับเด็ก หากแต่เหมาะกับผู้ใหญ่ที่มีอารมณ์ขันสักหน่อยอ่านให้เด็กเล็ก ๆ ฟัง จะเพลินและสนุกดี -
Right! I have no idea, what I feel about this one.
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*read for school
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This book aint joking when it said complete nonsense, cause it is 🗣️
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Sometimes is funny with all the rhymes and old stuff, but most of the topics not related to my personal life (more into not relatable to 2010s jokes). But good and inspiring illustrations
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It's hard to imagine that there is another reputable author who consistently held himself or herself to as limited an artistic standard as Edward Lear. This volume contains over 100 pages of what we can only call limericks, not one of which is as good as the first poem I found by typing "random limerick" into Google.
But hey -- judge for yourself. Here's a sample from Lear:
"There was an Old Person of Bangor,
Whose face was distorted with anger!
He tore off his boots,
And subsisted on roots,
That irascible Person of Bangor."
Compare this to poem #21 under the heading "Death" in the Wordsworth Book of Limericks:
"A daring young fellow in Bangor
Sneaked a super-swift jet from its hangar.
When he crashed in the bay,
Neighbors laid him away
In rather more sorrow than anger."
If, after carefully considering these poems, you still want to read the present collection, more power to you. -
This book is exactly as it's title announces -- nonsense. Edward Lear is known for his limericks and the poem, "The Owl and the Pussycat." He uses many made up, silly words, which would naturally delight a child. Except that many of these poems could not be read to a child today because of our society's sensitivity. Such as:
There was an Old Man of the East,
Who gave all his children a feast;
But they all eat so much, and their conduct was such
That it killed that Old Man of the East.
Lots of unpleasant endings for his limerick characters. But one can't read these without getting in the mood to try one's own hand at limericks.
Lear also produced many A,B,C illustrations which I thoroughly enjoyed.
All of this nonsense came with Lear's illustrations of odd-looking people, animals and objects.
This is not a book one picks up and reads like a novel -- but rather "tastes" when one wants a little nonsense in one's life. -
Yes, I did think this book was more or less complete nonsense. It was a type of humor I just don't appreciate. I do like a good limerick. "The limerick packs laughs anatomical / In space that is quite economical. / But the good ones I've seen / So seldom are clean / And the clean ones so seldom are comical." Edward's are clean, and the last line usually repeats the exact phrase of the first line like this: "There was an Old Man at a casement / Who held up his hands in amazement / When they said, 'Sir, you'll fall!' / He replied, 'Not at all!' / That incipient Old Man at a casement." Yawn. Lear's illustrations are what saved this book from a one star rating.
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'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.'
' There was a Young Lady of Tyre
Who swept the loud chords of a lyre;
At the sound of each sweep
She enraptured the deep,
And enchanted the city of Tyre.' -
5 stars for The Owl and the Pussycat, the Jumblies, and Self-Portrait. 1-2 stars for almost everything else in this cursed book. You'd think "nonsense" would be more fun to read, but this was an absolute chore to finish. I have to confess, by the last 50 pages I was just skimming along, praying for it to end.
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What a strange read. I will admit I skimmed most of it because the content is some of the oddest ramblings I have come across. Kind of like being inside the head of a writer/poet who is mentally unstable or having a nervous breakdown. Some of the hand drawings were creative though.
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مثل ماقلت من قبل، أدب التفاهة حاجة غريبه وجميلة وممتعة!
أفكار كثيره عجيبه تُخلط وتتحرك وتخرج بسلاسة وكأنها تحدث كُل يوم.
شخصيات لا تفكر بإمكانية تحويلها لأبطال قصص تجدها ترقص وتسافر في مغامرات طويله لا معنى لها.
حبيت إدورد لير من هالكتاب. حس الفكاهة عنده جداً عالي ومميز. -
I'm not sure which edition of Edward Lear's nonsense poetry I read as a kid so I picked this one. Really enjoyed it!
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Interesting genre. Of the whole collection, I liked most the first one,
A Book of Nonsense. -
I suggest reading this in two installments. I read about 40% of it, including the very good Holbrook Jackson introduction, back in late Feb 2020, immediately following the birth of my daughter. Then I read the remaining 60% nearly a year to the day, on 2/16/2021, a day that saw me grappling with all the anxieties attendant to fatherhood, early middle age, and so on.
Suffice it to say, Lear is no Lewis Carroll or George MacDonald. But he wouldn't claim to be. What he was was your typical English eccentric "bachelor," in his case a working artist born of a fallen Highgate family, who churned out sketches and paintings and wrote nonsense verse on the side.
What's interesting here is the fusion of art and text, something few Victorian wordsmiths (Gilbert and Sullivan aside; Gilbert's illustrations enhance the libretti considerably -
https://gsarchive.net/gilbert/artist/...) brought to the table. Many a sentence or verse that seems like low-level gibberish is turned into "nonsense, the divinest sense" because of a well-placed illustration infra or supra.
Additionally, there are genuinely arresting passages, both in the limericks and longer works, that linger in the mind for a far more extensive period than Lear likely imagined they would (he seems to be quite certain he's producing throwaway doggerel, even if he bothers to cleverly re-use characters like "Xerxes" and the "Quangle-Wangle" in multiple pieces throughout the Lear-verse). But I insist: "Great bards besides / In sage and solemn times have sung / Of tourneys and of trophies hung; / Of forests and enchantments drear / *Where more is meant than meets the ear.*"
To give a few examples: "Mr. and Mrs. Discobbolos" is the story of a wife who can't stand a simple yet prosperous life atop a wall without whining about her fate, so her husband blows up the wall and kills her, himself, and their kids; "The New Vestments" is about a trend-setting hermit who outfits himself in meat and sweets and instead of being fawned over upon his return to "haute society" is nearly eaten alive by children and wild beasts; and "The History of the Seven Families of Lake Pipple-Popple" is a ghastly fairy story about 49 offspring of seven animal families who are all killed because they failed to heed their parents' advice about various trivial matters, leading to the grief-stricken parents deciding to embalm themselves so they can be placed in an obscure back room of a local museum.
Highly recommended.
