Lewis Carroll and the Limerick
The idea of starting with the three limericks Lewis Carroll wrote (at the age of 13 for the first of his domestic magazines, Useful and Instructive Poetry) may seem peculiar, as they are neither good nor of any historical importance. Carroll fans, not satisfied of admiring the most cited author of all times, will be delighted to know that Morton N. Cohen himself, on page 13 of his biography, states that “these limericks may well have preceded Lear’s, or were at least contemporaneous with Lear’s first book of nonsense in 1846.” Of course the limerick had already been made popular by at least four booklets published in 1820s, and Edward Lear only revitalized the form some twenty years later; his production, in any case started in the 1830s, while he was staying at Knowsley to draw the animals in Lord Derby’s menagerie.
See Melodies I, Melodies II, Melodies III.
Doug Harris says, ‘Leave young Lewis Carroll alone!’. These limericks are just fine and probably better than anything I’ve ever produced at a much later stage of maturity I should add. Furthermore, all limericks are of historical importance. So, apart from the fact that I disagree with everything you’ve said, it’s a pleasure to know Mr Scrooge.
Best wishes (really),
Doug
[…] have ignored Lear’s 1846 Book of Nonsense might be confirmed by the fact that the young Dodgson actually wrote a few limericks, all of them composed in that same […]