The Spook

The Spook
The February 2002 issue of this shiny horror magazine has a long interesting article on Edward Gorey by Deborah Markus, reviewing three recently published biographies.
By the way, the magazine also has the best monthly comics column I have read in years…
You will have to download the full pdf version of the magazine, in high or low resolution. You can also choose to download the Gorey article (1.6MB) by right clicking and choosing “save object as…”

Posted in Edward Gorey | Leave a comment

Introduction to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Introduction to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland By Will Self
BloomsburyMagazine.com – Ezine

Posted in Lewis Carroll | Leave a comment

Introduction to Through the Looking-Glass

Introduction to Through the Looking-Glass By Zadie Smith
[From the rising star of British fiction…]
BloomsburyMagazine.com – Ezine

Posted in Lewis Carroll | Leave a comment

Beautiful Birds: Masterpieces from the Hill Ornithology Collection

Beautiful Birds: Masterpieces from the Hill Ornithology Collection
Cornell University Library
[Almost nothing on Lear, but interesting for background information, especially concerning the different techniques.]

Posted in Edward Lear, General | Leave a comment

The True Mother Goose

The True Mother Goose
Songs for the Nursery, Or, Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children. Notes and Pictures by Blanche McManus. Published by Lamson, Wolffe and Co., Boston. 1895.
[A Kellscraft online facsimile edition.]

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Stanley Unwin: Master of nonsense

Stanley Unwin: Master of nonsense Professor” Stanley Unwin specialised in an unfathomable verbal style, replete with malapropisms and poetic gobbledegook.
[Look at it only if you can bear to read the following statement: “Fascinated by the absurdity of this language and with that of Edward Lear of Jabberwocky fame, he developed his own bizarre vocabulary, Unwinese, with which he delighted his own children.”]
BBC also has another obituary: Comedian Stanley Unwin dies, and a page with samples: Stanley Unwin Thinking of England on BBCi.

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Obituary: Stanley Unwin

Obituary: Stanley Unwin
Few variety artistes have caught the public�s imagination quite like Stanley Unwin, the self-styled �Professor of Unwinese�, a glottal-stopped gobbledegookian language that sounded deceptively like English trying to swallow itself. For more than fifty years he gave bewildering humorous expositions which might almost have come from the pages of Finnegans Wake.
Unwinese developed out of bedtime stories that he had invented for his children, together with an admiration he had for the nonsense poet Edward Lear.
The Times

Posted in General | Leave a comment

The American Mix

The American Mix | Your Guide to Intelligent Fun
[Julie Rybicki suggested this: ‘It tells the tale of the writer Howard Norman’s strange pub encounter with an old man, who, after hearing on the CBC radio of Norman’s affection for Edward Lear, gives Norman an original ornithological Lear print of a raven. This Raven print, said the man,”was the bane of his childhood.” ‘
You will need to register to access the article.]

Posted in Edward Lear | Leave a comment

La campagna romana da Hackert a Balla

La campagna romana da Hackert a Balla
[Announcement of an Italian exhibition of paintings of the Roman campagna; no mention of Lear, though he was active in the same years.]

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Rhyme and reason

Rhyme and reason
If it is the ludicrous that you want, invest in Edward Lear�s The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense (edited by Vivien Noakes, Penguin). �Nonsense is the breath of my nostrils� Lear wrote. He saw it as the only feasible response to �this ludicrously whirligig life which one suffers from first & laughs at afterwards�.
The Times

Posted in Edward Lear | Leave a comment