Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets is a collection by Edward Lear published at the end of 1870 (dated 1871). It contains some of his most famous nonsense poems, including The Owl and the Pussy-cat, The Jumblies and The Duck and the Kangaroo, along with absurd stories, imaginary plants and comic alphabets, all with his own drawings.
The Owl and the Pussy-cat
An owl and a cat set out to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat, with honey and money. After a year and a day they find a pig with a ring and are married.
The poem's musical refrains and invented words, such as the runcible spoon, made it one of the best-loved children's poems.
Nonsense botany
Lear invented imaginary plants with mock-Latin names, drawn as if for a scientific book, playing on words and shapes.
His comic alphabets give each letter of the alphabet its own absurd rhyme and drawing.
The art of nonsense
Lear's nonsense is not simply silly: it has strict rhythms, rhymes and a strange melancholy, especially in poems about wandering and loneliness.
He wrote for the children of his friends and for his own pleasure, between long journeys as a landscape painter.
Anecdotes
A runcible spoon
Lear invented the word runcible, which appears in several of his poems. Dictionaries later used it for a kind of fork with curved prongs.
Written for a little girl
The Owl and the Pussy-cat was written in 1867 for Janet Symonds, the young daughter of a friend, who was ill.
Frequently asked questions
When was the book published?
At the end of 1870, with the date 1871.
Who illustrated it?
Edward Lear himself.
Where do the Owl and the Pussy-cat sail?
To a faraway land, where they buy a ring from a pig and are married.