Tag Archives: nonsense rhymes

Peter Newell, A Matter of Direction

Posted on September 12, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

Harper’s Round Table, vol. 18, 5 November 1896, p. 24.

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Not strange so blithesome I appear! I was brought up on Edward Lear

Posted on August 27, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

The following was published in William B. Osgood Field’s Edward Lear on My Shelves (p. 158). Osgood Field found it in a copy of Edward Lear’s 1871 Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets: A fly-leaf obviously from another copy, with yellow recto … Continue reading →

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Edward Lear and Edward Gibbon

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

On 2 January 1882 Edward Lear wrote in his diary that he “took a Gibbon’s Rise & Fall up to Mrs. Welfords” and then at the bottom of the page added a limerick obviously inspired by this event: the poem … Continue reading →

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Carolyn Wells’s Lovely Lilly

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

Carolyn Wells often contributed to the children’s sections of newspapers in the first decade of the XX century. One of the weirdest of these contributions was no doubt Adventures of Lovely Lilly, which ran in the Sunday New York Herald from December 1906 … Continue reading →

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Peter Newell, The Minstrel

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

Harper’s New Monthly, August 1894, p. 486.

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Peter Newell, A Sentimental Poem

Posted on August 6, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

If I should write a sentiment, The best I could invent, ‘Twould not be worth a dime, I fear — That is — a cent, I ment. Peter Newell Peter Newell, Autograph Poem Signed, “Peter Newell,” one page, March 15, … Continue reading →

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The First English Limerick?

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

The text set as No. XXII in Michael East’s Second Set of Madrigals 1606 is an almost perfect limerick (East, xii and 115-20; Fellowes, 91{1}); a fact which I believe has not been noted before. The piece runs: O metaphysical … Continue reading →

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Edward Lear and Charles Kingsley

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

From Notes and Queries, n.s. 16.6 (Vol. 214), June 1969, pp. 216-217: An Edward Lear Letter to Charles Kingsley Apparently, Edward Lear and Charles Kingsley never became personally acquainted. No records are presently known to attest sucha relationship. However, after … Continue reading →

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Northrop Frye on Edward Lear and the Limerick

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

From Northrop Frye’s 1932 Notebook: July 23 I read 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 … Continue reading →

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George C. Chappelle, ‘Twas Ever Thus

Posted on February 15, 2015 by Marco Graziosi

George C. Chappelle, “‘Twas Ever Thus.” Sculpture by Gilbert White. The Metropolitan Magazine, vol. XXII no. 6, September 1905, p. 773.

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