A Blog of Bosh

Helen Stilwell’s Laughable Looloos 1906 series is now available in full colour at Nonsense in the Early Comics.

The architect, John Prentiss Benson (1865-1947), had always dreamed of becoming an artist like his older brother Frank. In 1905 he lived in Flushing NY with his wife and four children and worked at his architecture firm of Benson and Brockway. He kept a studio in his home where he dabbled with paints, brushes, and [...]

I had just finished my previous post when I received the following article from Arthur:
A New Book of Nonsense
The nonsense craze started by Edward Lear in the 1840s eventually swept through the entire English speaking world. The spread, however, was more of a creep than an explosion in the early years by today’s standards.
In [...]

A number of early limerick books are now available for your online enjoyment, including the four published in the 1820s that inspired Edward Lear:

The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women. Illustrated with as many engravings; exhibiting their principal eccentricities and amusements. Much credit is due to our artist, I ween; For such pictures as these [...]

Although it may sound sacrilegious, some artists have actually chosen to re-illustrate the verses in Edward Lear’s A Book of Nonsense. These Latter Day Neo Reform Limericks keep popping up everyday in bookshops.

It’s not that Lear didn’t get it, or that Lear couldn’t draw, it’s just that that was then and this is now. [...]

Nothing [...] amused Lear more than the failure of some people to appreciate the utter absence of sense in his nonsense. He used to relate that some one once wrote to him to say that he had marched various botanical and other works without finding any allusion to a “Bong-tree.” Where, his correspondent, asked, did [...]