A Blog of Bosh

More than just make believe
Review of Jackie Wullschlager, HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN: The Life of a Storyteller.
Wullschlager is right to give Andersen the credit for being the first person to choose the fairy story as a literary form and then invent new ones, thereby paving the way for Lewis Carroll and the British “golden age” of [...]

Why did Lear write 4 {2, 3, 5, 6} line limericks?
An expert’s answer to a frequently asked question.

The cat poet
Eliot, a fan of the nonsense verse of Edward Lear, had been writing these thumpa-dump rhythm poems to amuse the children of his associates at the London publishing house, Faber and Faber, where Eliot worked. The book is dedicated to several children and to “the Man in White Spats,” presumably a cat.The Spokesman-Review.com

Karneval – Ensemble – Karneval der Tiere: Musiktheater mit Puppen fur Menschen ab 6 Jahren
Pages on a musical play with music by Camille Saint-Sa�ns and a text which uses Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s translation of The Duck and the Kangaroo.In German.

Edward Lear, Choropiskeros, Corfu, a watercolour with pen, ink and coloured chalks
Here the precision and colouring of the distant landscape show the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, whose style he attempted to emulate after meeting William Holman Hunt in 1852. The foreground, however, shows a free, bold handling in the manner of Turner, whose taste for [...]

Edward Lear, L is much disturbed by several large flies, a drawing in pen and ink
This jolly sketch, in the manner of his comic illustrations, records an incident on a journey through Italy with his servant Giorgio Kokoli (’K’). This is one of twenty-one from the series in the British Museum’s collections; they picture the [...]

Calico Pie – SBMP 241
Timothy STRANG’s music for Lear’s poem.

Lost in Goreyland, Pursued by a Hippo
The somehow cheerful drawing on the curtain � a headless man reclining comfortably on a pedestal � that greets theatergoers at “The Gorey Details” sends just the right message about the performance that is about to begin.Date: October 17, 2000Source: The New York Times | Section: Arts

Edward Gorey: Master of the Macabre, Prolific and Dead
After Edward Gorey died in April, Andreas Brown, one of the executors of his estate, visited Gorey�s 200-year-old, 15-room house in Yarmouth Port, Mass. He discovered hundreds of stories and sketches, some finished , some unfinished.Date: October 16, 2000Source: The New York Times | Section: Arts

Off-Broadway ‘Musicale’ Unveils Gorey Details, Oct. 16