The Complete Nonsense and Other Verse

“Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve”

“Nonsense is the breath of my nostrils’, wrote Edward Lear. Through his exuberant and timeless verse he created an extraordinary world in which the strangest creatures are at home, where people misbehave with joyful abandon and the rules of everyday life never apply. His most famous poems, such as ‘The Owl and the Pussy-cat’, ‘The Jumblies’ and ‘The Quangle Wangle’s Hat’, have enchanted children and adults alike for generations.

Containing previously unpublished material, Vivien Noakes’s paperback edition of Lear’s nonsense writings includes well-loved poems along with limericks, stories, letters, illustrated alphabets and even nonsense recipes.

Complemented throughout by Lear’s fantastical line drawings, this is the perfect introduction to his world of nonsense.