A Blog of Bosh

A new article is available on the nonsenselit.org bookshelf: Carolyn Wells, “Limericks.” Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, vol. 55, no. 5, March 1903, pp. 532-5.
It mostly consists of limericks by authors well-know at the turn of the twentieth century. Worth of a mention is the above carp, drawn by Oliver Herford for a limerick by [...]

Over at 5lines (A limerick a day!) I am publishing a series by Oliver Herford which appeared in the Century Magazine between 1911 and 1913.
Here is another humorous poem which appeared in the same magazine in the June 1930 issue (vol. Vol. LXXXVI, pp. 320-1).

Text and pictures by OLIVER HERFORD
A SCULPTOR once, in search of [...]

Ever since I heard of Google Earth I realised it would be very useful for limerick lovers, but I was too lazy to try and find out how to create interactive maps until I found this post at the Stoa Consortium blog; so here come kmz files for each of the four limerick books published [...]

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. [...]

Arthur Deex has digitized two more early limerick books, Ye Book of Bubbles (1864) and Ye Book of Sense (c1870), and writes of the latter:

A Review in the May 88 Pentatette
A recent addition to my collection was a book of limericks that was previously unknown to me: Ye Book of Sense: A [...]

Arthur Deex has acquired a very nice copy of a rare book of limericks and has kindly chosen to share it:

Lyrics Pathetic and Humorous from A to Z by Edmund Dulac (1882-1953) is a delightful Alphabet Book of 24 colorful plates (X, Y & Z are combined), each with a limerick. The book was [...]

The recently launched Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, provides a great collection of early recordings from the Edison era.
Among these Edward M. Favor’s Fol-the-rol-lol is one of my favourites, at least since Arthur Deex sent me a cassette with one of the two recorded versions (I’m sorry to [...]