A Blog of Bosh

Was Lewis Carroll’s interest in Alice sinister?
It is true that the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll, author of the inimitable classics Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, liked little girls. Or, as he once wrote: “I am fond of children (except boys).” He took exquisite, melancholy photographs of [...]

Classic Review - Just So Stories
I t was only a century ago, as everybody remembers, that literary sucklings were nurtured on the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress, Paradise Lost, and Fox’s Book of Martyrs. This was not in all respects an admirable diet for readers of any age, but it had its good points. There is a [...]

Ship of fools. All aboard! by Vivien Noakes
EDWARD LEAR would have been delighted, though not, I think, entirely surprised that The Owl and The Pussycat was recently voted the nation�s favourite children�s poem. �Nonsense is the breath of my nostrils,� he once wrote, and his joy in absurdity reflected his whole approach to �this ludicrously [...]

John Gould’s Birds of Australia
A page from the Treasures of the Library section of the National Library of Australia.

‘Ascending Peculiarity’: How Gorey Became Gorey
How Gorey became Gorey is the heart of the 21 interviews with assorted writers and critics, dated from 1973 to 1999, the year before his death, collected in ”Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey,” edited by Karen Wilkin, an art critic who also contributes a useful introduction.The New York [...]

‘Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ voted favourite children’s poem
Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been voted Britain’s favourite children’s poem in the first public poll of its kind, carried out by the BBC.Independent

Top poetry is complete nonsense
In a 1998 poll The Owl and the Pussy-cat ranked only 8th, but this was for “comic poems”.BBC News | Entertainment (October 10, 1998)

What’s your favourite children’s poem?
Here you can read most of the top ten poems.BBC - Arts - Poetry

Poet extols verse’s ‘healing’ quality
Some 1,000 balloons bearing the words of The Owl and the Pussy-Cat - voted the country’s best-loved children’s poem - were released into the London skies.BBC News | ARTS

The top ten votes
1 The Owl and the Pussy-Cat Edward Lear 2 Matilda Hilaire Belloc 3 Don�t Michael Rosen 4 Jabberwocky Lewis CarrollThe Times