by Edward Lear; compiled and illustrated by John Vernon Lord

Harmony Books, 1984

Image from BenCourtney.com

“How pleasant to know Mr Lear” begins the last poem in this collection, an autobiographical piece titled “The Self-Portrait of the Laureate of Nonsense.” How pleasant indeed! Reading Edward Lear’s poems is delightfully laugh-inducing. Many of Lear’s limericks follow a very regular pattern: an aabba rhyme scheme, with the first line introducing the character and where they’re from, and the last line describing the person with an (often unrelated or made-up) adjective or other concluding remark and repeating their title, for example:

There was an Old Person of Grange, 

Whose manners were scroobious and strange; 

He sailed to St Blubb, in a waterproof tub, 

That aquatic Old Person of Grange. 

While the repetition of the last line and often irregular rhythms can be frustrating to poetry purists, the choice of words (particularly the ones he invented!) and ridiculous situations in Lear’s poems are hilarious. He paved the way for Dr. Seuss and many others with the invention of words like “borascible,” “ombliferous” and “runcible.” His longer poems, which allow for more narrative than the short limericks, are often even funnier and sometimes hit other emotions as well. I found myself sympathizing with the Dong with a luminous nose as he illuminated the beach in vain, waiting for his love to return. Speaking of the Dong with a luminous nose, he is one of a few recurring characters in Lear’s poems, along with the Jumblies and the Pobble who has no toes. Imagined places also show up in different poems, like the Great Gromboolian plain and the hills of the Chankly Bore. Lord’s compilation arranges the limericks loosely into themes, so that “subjects with remarkable noses, the dancers, the greedy ones, the ones who spend their time in trees, and other related limerick personae” can “throw light on one another” (xvii). He took poems from a variety of sources, creating “apart from Nonsense Stories, Cookery and Alphabets” a “comprehensive collection of Lear’s nonsense verse. Lord also illustrated the collection himself. While they are not Lear’s original illustrations, Lord’s pen and ink drawings appropriately run the gamut from charming to funny to grotesque.  

(This review was originally submitted to my Materials for Children class)