Dough Harris informs me that the limerick book I discussed here, Bosh by W.S. (London: Bickers & Son, 1876) is now available online at Google Books.
According to Bob Turveys’s The Secret Life of Limericks (2025, chapter 5) W.S. was “the famously idle Reverend Walter Sneyd (1809-1888).”
A Blog of Bosh 
Marco, Bob,
I was delighted to see that the Bosh booklet was in fact downloadable as a pdf from Google books. Ooh, I love something for free.
It got me to wondering … could the author, WS, be WS Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan / Bab Ballads fame? He’d have been 40 when Bosh was published but too obvious a jump perhaps?
Although I can’t find a connection between Gilbert and the Bosh publisher Bickers & Son, there is evidence of WS Gilbert using the word ‘bosh’ around this time in his librettos and poetry, using it to mean nonsense, twaddle or bother.
Utopia Limited (a Savoy Opera), or The Flowers of Progress – “Such bosh I never heard!”
Allow Me to Explain (1867 farce) – “This day month! Oh, bosh! Say to-day!”
Haunted (in Fun Magazine March 1866) – “To choke such baby bosh in”.
Sir Macklin (in Fun Magazine Sept 1867) – “Oh, bosh!” the worthy bishop said”
Doug >