Over the Land and Over the Sea Selected Nonsense and Travel Writings

by Swaab, Peter; Lear, Edward

• ISBN13: 9781857547597
• ISBN10: 1857547594
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-28
• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd.

Summary

Comic invention and an unrestrained sense of the absurd are explored in this collection of one of England's best-loved poets. Adored by generations of nonsense-loving children and treasured by adults conscious of the subtle melancholy that underlies the fun, these writings whisk readers away not only to the fabled lands of the Jumblies and the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo but also to 19th-century Albania, Greece, Calabria, and Corsica, where the poet's encounters with the people and customs are recorded with an acute and ruefully comical imagination. Setting Lear's nonsense verse alongside his six travel books, Swaab paints a complete picture of Lear, capturing his ability to see the uncanny and surreal in all things.

Author Biography

Edward Lear was born in London in 1812. the youngest of a family of twenty children, he was largely brought up by his sister Ann. His first commission as a young artist, to make drawings of the parrots in the London Zoo, established his reputation as an ornithological illustrator and led to him being taken on by the Earl of Derby to produce illustrations o his menagerie at Knowsley Hall, near Liverpool. It was whilst working at Knowsley that Lear began to write nonsense verse, to entertain the Earl’s children. In 1846 he was engaged to give a series of drawing lessons to Queen Victoria. Lear became a successful artist, an associate of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and with work accepted by the Royal Academy, but his health was poor, and he was prone to depression; the death of Ann in 1861 was particularly distressing to him, Throughout his life he travelled widely in Southern Europe and further afield in Egypt, the Holy Land and India, writing and painting. In 1870 Lear built a house in San Remo, where he died in 1888.

PETER SWAAB, Department Tutor and Senior Lecturer in English at University College London, has published Lives of the Great Romantics: Wordsworth (Pickering, 1996) and essays on Wollstonecraft, Hopkins, James, and Gunn, and a life of Charles Lamb for the New DNB. He is preparing from manuscript editions of the poetry and prose of Sara Coleridge, much of it previously unpublished. He is also working on a book of essays on ideas of utopia in gay and lesbian literature.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgements	viii
Introduction	ix
Selected Further Reading	xxv
Nonsense Writings
Eclogue	4	(2)
'When the light dies away on a calm summer's eve'	6	(1)
Ode to the little China Man	7	(1)
The Hens of Oripò	8	(1)
Limericks from A Book of Nonsense (1846 and 1855)	9	(13)
Limericks from A Book of Nonsense (1861)	22	(6)
'She sits upon her Bulbul'	28	(1)
The Duck and the Kangaroo	28	(2)
The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Round the World	30	(13)
Growling Eclogue	43	(4)
The Owl and the Pussy-cat	47	(2)
The Broom, the Shovel, the Poker, and the Tongs	49	(2)
The Daddy Long-legs and the Fly	51	(3)
Nonsense Cookery	54	(2)
Nonsense Botany (1)	56	(2)
The Jumblies	58	(3)
The Nutcrackers and the Sugar-tongs	61	(1)
Mr and Mrs Discobbolos	62	(2)
The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò	64	(4)
Limericks from More Nonsense, Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, Etc. (1872)	68	(11)
Nonsense Botany (2)	79	(3)
'Cold are the crabs that crawl on yonder hill'	82	(1)
The Scroobious Pip	83	(4)
The Quangle Wangle's Hat	87	(2)
The Pobble who has no Toes	89	(1)
The Akond of Swat	90	(4)
The Cummerbund: An Indian Poem	94	(2)
The Pelican Chorus	96	(2)
The Two Old Bachelors	98	(2)
The Dong with a Luminous Nose	100	(3)
Nonsense Trees	103	(3)
'Mrs Jaypher found a wafer'	106	(1)
The Later History of the Owl and the Pussy-cat	106	(1)
'O dear! how disgusting is life!'	107	(1)
'How pleasant to know Mr Lear!'	108	(1)
Mr and Mrs Discobbolos: Second Part	109	(2)
Some Incidents in the Life of my Uncle Arly	111	(2)
'He only said "I'm very weary"'	113	(2)
Travel Writings
from the Prospectus to Views in Rome and Its Environs: Drawn from Nature and on Stone (1841)	115	(6)
from Illustrated Excursions in Italy, Volumes I and II (1846)	121	(46)
from Journals of a Landscape Painter in Albania, Etc. (1851)	167	(68)
from Journals of a Landscape Painter in Southern Calabria, Etc. (1852)	235	(46)
'A Leaf from the Journals of a Landscape Painter' (1858, 1897)	281	(16)
from Views in the Seven Ionian Islands (1863)	297	(8)
from Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica (1870)	305	(36)
Appendix: Lear and Natural History	341	(8)
Index of Nonsense Verse First Lines	349	(2)
Index of Places	351