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Peter Newell as a Successor to Edward Lear
Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1899, vol. C, No. DXCV, “Literary Notes” by John Kendrick Bangs, review of Peter Newell’s Pictures and Rhymes:
… Equally individual in the character of his work is Mr. Peter Newell, who has just published a collection of his quaintly illustrated nonsense verses under the title of Peter Newell’s Pictures and Rhymes. The world has for a long time yearned for an acceptable successor to Edward Lear, whose “Book of Nonsense” has been for many years a household treasure, and Mr. Newell appears to be about the worthiest of all the candidates. There is a whimsical touch in all that he does, whether it be in picture or in text, that appeals to the soul of man, and it is his good fortune to be wholly original. There is never any mistaking Mr. Newell’s work for that of any other picture-maker past or present, and in his rhyming he seems to have hit upon a form and a manner which are as distinctively his own as were the rhymes of Lear characteristic of the older man. Mr. Newell is fortunate in having a double gift. We know of no other illustrator who could enter so thoroughly into the spirit of his rhymes, and he is to be congratulated upon his complete accord with himself, which was never more conspicuously shown than in this volume.
