A Blog of Bosh

Lord Purrpurr of the Fuzzberrys gives his rendition of Edward Lear’s “Owl and the Pussycat:”

Over at the Language Log Bill Poser has a post, prompted by the recent Supreme Court decision on “Bong hits 4 Jesus,” on the different meanings of “bong”.
In a previous post I connected the “bong tree” to the Buddha’s “bo tree,” or Indian fig tree. The etymology provided for “bong” as a smoking implement in [...]

Edward Lear’s most famous poem is performed by the “amazing” Kazzy, with limited animation:
The Owl and the PussycatCaricato da norrisnuvo

From an e-mail from Shipra Ogra, Administrator of the London Bubble Theatre Company:
London Bubble Theatre company is showing Edward Lear’s “The Dong with a Luminous Nose” as part of theatre in the parks we do every summer. We will take Edward Lear’s much-loved nonsense poem and inject a touch of reality to create an open-air [...]

Some time ago I placed William Foster’s illustrations from Nonsense Drolleries. The Owl & the Pussy-cat. The Duck & the Kangaroo. London: Frederick Warne, 1889 in the nonsenselit.org’s picture gallery: their most striking feature, in my opinion, is the fact that the illustrator is unique in choosing to represent the Owl as the bride and [...]

I mentioned in a previous post that Edward Lear’s copy of Alice in Wonderland is now in the USA, that he discussed the book with Fortescue (though we do not know what he thought of it), and that his circle considered Carroll’s tales as belonging to the same genre of literary Nonsense which Lear had [...]

Here is a typical Edward Lear caricature self-portrait I saved from an eBay auction a few months ago (starting price was GBP750.00 with an estimate of 1,500-2,000):

The speech bubble contains a message to Evelyn Baring, first Earl of Cromer (1841-1917): “9 A.M. will do beautifully but I would have made 6-7-or 8 do if H.E [...]

I have been looking for episodes from the Tomfoolery Show at least since 2002, when I heard of this show largely based on characters created by Edward Lear.

While no episode has turned up so far, Ron Kurer’s Toon Tracker at least provides a few pictures; according to the entry, Tomfoolery was

a series patterned after NBC’s [...]

Lear Productions, a division of RS Productions, is filming a three-part TV series on Edward Lear’s travels in Greece and Albania, writer and traveller Rob Horne will follow in the footsteps of Lear. The first programme is ready and the second should have been filmed in April-May. A gallery of images is available on the [...]

Archive.org has placed online the two early collections of Edward Lear’s letters:
Letters of Edward Lear to Chichester Fortescue, Lord Carlingford, and Frances Countess Waldegrave. Edited by Lady Strachey. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907 (1909 edition).
Later letters of Edward Lear to Chichester Fortescue (Lord Carlingford), Frances, Countess Waldegrave, and others. Edited by Lady Strachey. London: T. [...]