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

The Phonosemantics of Nasal-Stop Clusters

The Phonosemantics of Nasal-Stop Clusters by Ralph Emerson
The humorousness of nasal-stops also makes them one of the secrets of nonsense poets. Dr. Seuss’s books have dozens of nasal-stop coinages, from the Grinch to the Rink-Rinker-Fink. The flora and fauna in Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” include a “Tumtum tree” and a “frumious Bandersnatch.” Edward Lear’s little Jumblies set sail for “the hills of the Chankly Bore” with “forty bottles of ring-bo-ree.” And Spike Milligan writes of a very “noisy place to belong” called the “Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!”
[This article about the symbolism of nasal-stop clusters (the sounds MB, MP; ND, NT; NG, NK) also mentions The Jumblies, but � while doing much of ‘ding’s and ‘dong’s � incredibly does not refer to The Dong With a Luminous Nose!]
Iconicity in Language (9/9/2001)

Posted in Edward Lear, General, Lewis Carroll | Leave a comment

A Taxonomy of Sound Poetry

Dick Higgins, A TAXONOMY OF SOUND POETRY
[From one of the best sites I know, an essay on ‘sound poetry’ which mentions Lear � and Nonsense poetry in general � as a predecessor.
__ U B U W E B__ : __ P A P E R S __

Posted in Edward Lear, General | Leave a comment

Aspects of the Victorian Book

Aspects of the Victorian book, at the British Library
Lear only appears in the “Illustration” section with the Javan Squirrel, but the whole exhibition provides interesting background on the production and publishing of books in the 19th century.

Posted in Edward Lear, General | Leave a comment

Treasures from the World's great libraries

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA: Treasures from the World’s great libraries
The National Library of Australia is proud to announce a landmark international exhibition, Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries.
This will include “Edward Lear’s illustrated version of the nursery rhyme High Diddle Diddle”.

Posted in Edward Lear | Leave a comment