Tag Archives: Limerick

“Nonsense!” – Words from Edward Lear, music by Mel Orriss

Posted on January 13, 2022 by Marco Graziosi

Festive Flutes and Mel Orriss perform six of Lear’s limericks set to music.

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Legend of the Large Mouth

Posted on October 4, 2021 by Marco Graziosi

Food is one of the recurrent themes of Victorian Nonsense and Edward Lear certainly used it quite a lot; some of his limericks present gluttony as rather scary, for instance ther “Old Man of Calcutta”: The “Old man of the … Continue reading →

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Variant Versions of Edward Lear’s Limericks

Posted on July 1, 2021 by Marco Graziosi

‘There was an old person of Skye,/ Who was nearly a hundred feet high;/ He seemed to the people/ As tall as a steeple,/ And served as a lighthouse on Skye.’ (upper left) pen and brown ink, partial watermark ’18…’ … Continue reading →

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Three New Pieces of Nonsense by Edward Lear

Posted on June 24, 2021 by Marco Graziosi

The latest TLS (no. 6169 of 25 June 2021) contains three new Nonsense compositions by Edward Lear, found by Amy Wilcockson and Edmund Downey among the papers in the Charnwood Autograph Collection, British Library Add MS 70949, f. 239, f. … Continue reading →

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Little Bits of Nonsense

Posted on March 5, 2021 by Marco Graziosi

Here is another sequence of illustrated limericks that appeared in the early American comics supplements, in this case in the Detroit Free Press of 22 November, 1902. I have been unable to find more instalments. Thanks to Sunday Press Books‘ Peter … Continue reading →

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Irish Literary ‘Learics’

Posted on February 28, 2021 by Marco Graziosi

I have long thought that the word “learic” was an invention of modrn limerick scholars desperate to find a way to justify the word “limerick,” whose origin as it is applied to Edward Lear’s nonsenses is mysterious, but here is … Continue reading →

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An Early Limerick Manuscript

Posted on December 19, 2020 by Marco Graziosi

Manuscript. An illustrated book of limericks, circa 1865, 32pp., each with large illustration and limerick beneath in brown ink, some spotting and marks, paper watermarked ‘T & J H 1865’, sheet size 14 x 23cm (5.5 x 9ins), stitching broken … Continue reading →

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Northrop Frye on Edward Lear’s Last Lines

Posted on June 2, 2019 by Marco Graziosi

July 23, 1932 I read in a book on the limerick the other day by some supercilious ass who talked about Edward Lear as a pioneer but a childish and inane primitive because his first and last lines ended with … Continue reading →

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Tom Gauld’s Limerick

Posted on December 26, 2018 by Marco Graziosi

Source.

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There was an Old Man of Whitehaven…

Posted on November 1, 2018 by Marco Graziosi

There was an Old Man of Whitehaven, Who danced a quadrille with a raven; But they said, ‘It’s absurd To encourage this bird!’ So they smashed that Old Man of Whitehaven. From the Recent Antiquarian Acquisitions blog at the Lewis … Continue reading →

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