Complete Nonsense

Edward Lear began his career as an ornithological illustrator, becoming one of the first major artists to draw birds from living models. During this period he was employed to paint the birds from the private menagerie owned by Edward Stanley, the 13th Earl of Derby and one of Lear’s closest friends. In 1837, Lear’s health started to decline. His deteriorating eyesight and failing lungs forced him to abandon the detailed painting required for depicting birds, and, with the help of the earl, he moved to Rome where he established himself as a poet of literary nonsense. While Lear was visiting the Earl of Derby, he wrote poems and drew silly sketches to entertain the earl’s children. In 1846, he collected together his pile of limericks and illustrations and published his first poetical book, titled A Book of Nonsense and dedicated to the Earl of Derby and his children. He decided to publish under the pseudonym Derry down Derry, but after he started making plans for more books, he republished under his real name. His next book, Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets wasn’t published until 24 years later, in 1870. Lear then released More Nonsense, which contains more limericks, in 1872, and Laughable Lyrics in 1877. This final book in the series contains many of Lear’s most famous fantastical creatures, such as the Quangle Wangle. The influence of Lear’s poetry in the twentieth-century can be seen in styles like the surrealism movement and the theater of the absurd.

Every line of every nonsense book written by the celebrated humorist and author of "The Owl and the Pussycat." Illustrated by more than 500 of Lear's quirky drawings. Includes two selections from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Over 90 delightful limericks and 12 longer poems, including such classics as "The Owl and the Pussy-cat," "The Jumblies," and "Calico Pie," all accompanied by Lear's amusing illustrations.

'Nonsense', wrote Mervyn Peake, 'can take you by the hand and lead you nowhere. It's magic.' Peake (1911-68) is one of the great English nonsense poets, in the tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. His verses lead the reader into places where cause is cut free of effect and language takes on a giddy life of its own. Malicious bowler hats threaten their owners, a cake is chased across an ocean by a rakish knife, aunts become flatfish or live on sphagnum moss. Fully annotated, with a detailed introduction, Complete Nonsense contains all the poems and illustrations from Peake's Book of Nonsense (1972), with forty unpublished poems discovered in manuscripts and thirty from uncollected sources, including all the nonsense verses from his novels. It reprints complete - for the first time and in colour - the words and images from Rhymes without Reason (1944), and Peake's comic masterpiece Figures of Speech (1954). All the poems have been newly edited, often from Peake's manuscripts, by Robert Maslen, editor of Peake's Collected Poems (Carcanet), and Peter Winnington, the leading Peake scholar and biographer. Peake wrote of the rare art that glitters with the divine lunacy we call nonsense': Complete Nonsense glitters with Peake's benign and wayward imagination.

A collection of over 100 limericks with the author's original illustrations.

This collection demonstrates the varied ways in which Edward Lear pursued his philosophy of life. It includes 'The Owl and the Pussy-cat', 'The Quangle Wangle's Hat', and numerous comic limericks, along with stories, letters, alphabets and recipes. This ed. originally published: 2002.

Come bathe in stew, and dine on meals of eels or worms or jellied gnats, See shoes and ships and sealing wax and fuzzy bears and owls and cats, Depart for the Land where the Bong Tree grows or the Land of Bumbley Boo Find sky in your pie and teatrays up on high and a place where mice say moo. But be warned of the things that lurk and linger, the creatures that snatch and shock Be sure to bamboozle the Blunderbat and beware the Jabberwock! If rhymes and riddles your brain have fried For shame! then set this book aside, But daring children, more courageous, Will take a peek inside these pages... Includes exclusive material: In the Backstory you can about the different sorts of nonsense and read Michael Rosen's tips on how to write your own! Vintage Children's Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives. Discover timeless favourites from The Jungle Book and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to modern classics such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.