A Blog of Bosh

There were three little owl that had slept all day
In their downy nest in a dead tree’s hollow;
Said the first: “It’s time to go out and play,
I hear the good-night of the chimney-swallow!”
“Oh no,” said the second; “the sun is high,
Who wants to be blind as a bat? — not I!”
But the third said: “Rats! [...]

A HOPPERGRASS, one sunny day,
Turning hand-springs amid the hay,
O’erleaped himself, and fell into
A piggin of good apple brew.
“Shame on you, thirsty little one,”
Cried the haymakers in the sun;
The hopper took one draught, and then,
Ere he flew off, addressed the men:
“Good sirs,” quoth he, “although one swallow
Does not make summer, it would follow
That several swallows were [...]

In a previous post I noted a rare instance of contemporary reference in Gustave Verbeek’s Terrors of the Tiny Tads. Here is another from the strip for 19 May 1907, a few weeks after the appearance of the “Cowboisterous Kangaroosevelt Bear:”
Here comes the Rockefellerphant, so wealthy and so bold,
His stomach like a money bag, all [...]

“Wicked Willie’s Dream” by Walter M. Dunk appeared in Harper’s Round Table, vol. XVI, no. 821, 23 July 1895, 760 (click for full story):

It clearly anticipates Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, in particular for Willie’s position after his fall, but the idea of explaining an uncanny series of events as a dream at the [...]

The blog has been quiet for a long time, as I have been very busy and had to keep up with the daily publication of Edward Lear’s diaries. However, I have at last found time to add an article on Peter Newell to the nonsenselit.org bookshelf:

Hearn, Michael Patrick. “Peter Newell, American Comic Illustrator.” American Book [...]

Just a quick post to mention a few new resources relating to Edward Lear:

Never Mind the Pussycat: The Ornithological Art of Edward Lear, the companion site for a 2008 exhibition at the Albert R. Mann Library at Cornell University, has information on Lear as a zoological illustrator (mostly from Vivien Noakes’s books).
Rule-breaking and meaning-making in [...]

Below is a pen and ink calligraphic drawing by Jacob Labotz representing a cat and an owl. Online translator software is not very good with 18th-century Dutch, but it is obvious they are fighting for the possession of the mouse the owl is holding in his bill. The image is part of a series Labotz [...]

You may remember that RS Productions started working on a documentary on Edward Lear’s travels in Greece and Albania almost two years ago, and I linked to a promo last year.
The first of the three parts is now going to be broadcast in Britain by SkyArts 2 and SkyArts HD on 16 January at 1 [...]

Theodore Roosevelt’s refusal, in 1902, to shoot an imprisoned bear spawned a long series of political cartoons and, since the bound animal was often represented as a cub, and brought to the creation of the Teddy Bear.
Roosevelt’s hunting mania was the subject of a 1909 booklet by Peter Newell, Jungle Jangle, and of one of [...]

My Italian translation of Peter Newell’s Rocket Book, Il libro esplosivo, has been out for some time now. The publisher, orecchio acerbo, have a beautiful book trailer on YouTube:

While you are there, don’t miss the short for Stefano Benni’s first children’s book, Miss Galassia: