The Next Hundred Lears: Limericks After Lear

By John Arthur Nichol and Rory Walker

Edward Lear is remembered, and rightly so, as the Father of the Limerick. Were it not for him, this little five line verse form may never have become such a beloved, ubiquitous part of our literary and popular culture.

Yet the very thing that makes the limerick so appealing, held no appeal for Edward Lear. The final line of his verses offered no twist, and it didn’t seek to make his readers giggle. It was a summing up, and nothing more.

But Lear had opened Victorian eyes to the possibilities inherent in the limerick: His Book of Nonsense was a runaway bestseller.

In 1872 Lear published one hundred new limericks, hoping to repeat his earlier success. But while his earlier verses are still fondly remembered today, still anthologised, still quoted in mainstream and social media, his next hundred limericks are unknown.

Why?

Because, by 1872, the limerick had taken on a life of its own, and was romping towards the twentieth century with outlandish, irreverent and often obscene delight.

And Lear couldn't follow. It just wasn't in his nature to go there. So having set the limerick on its journey, he now stood alone and watched it vanish in the distance.

Limericks After Lear breathes new life into Edward Lear's creations. Book One, The Fifth Line, took A Book of Nonsense as its starting point and sent all 112 verses off in new directions.

Now, Book Two retrieves the forgotten verses of 1872 and presents them complete: one hundred original Lears, plus a brand new, family-friendly limerick for each.

The Next Hundred Lears … Two hundred limericks you won’t have met before. And they might even make you giggle :)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moonflight Press
• Release date: Jan 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9780648905936

Book preview

Always.

Foreword

In 1872 Edward Lear published a new book - More Nonsense Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, etc.. It included One Hundred Nonsense Pictures And Rhymes - a hundred new limericks closely modelled on the verses that had done so well for Lear in A Book of Nonsense.

These new limericks represent the third wave of Lear’s venture in the form.

The first was in 1846, when he published A Book of Nonsense.

The second was in 1863, when A Book of Nonsense, to Which is Added More Nonsense, became a bestseller, launching the limerick on a journey that would continue through the turn of two centuries.

Lear’s third wave was barely a ripple.

Coming nine years after his great success, the verses in One Hundred Nonsense Pictures and Rhymes caused no excitement. If they were read at all, they were quickly forgotten, along with Lear’s formula that discarded the most powerful element in a limerick’s line-up: the fifth line.

The limerick itself had moved on, with a strict set of rules defining a form that, paradoxically, could take on any thought a human being might entertain.

In The Fifth Line, I created 112 new limericks from the bones of A Book of Nonsense. I called it The Fifth Line because that was the part of the limerick - the heart of the limerick - that Lear had cast out, and that I wanted to restore.

In this second volume, The Next Hundred Lears, I’ve revived all of Lear’s 1872 originals and paired them with my own new verses. At times I draw clearly on the source; at others, I barely reference it. I’m fond of some, and less fond of others. Limericks are always a work in progress.

But they’re also an entertainment, and I hope that, in The Next Hundred Lears, you’ll find a genuine smile or two :)

John Arthur Nichol, Sydney, 2020.

The Verses

Verse One, every page after here,

Is a ’72 Edward Lear,

And the Second Verse then

Is by me, John A N,

In the twenty-first twentieth year.

A Person of Bantry

There was a Young Person of Bantry,

Who frequently slept in the pantry;

When disturbed by the mice, she appeased them with rice,

That judicious Young Person of Bantry.

Edward Lear

There was a Young Person of Bantry,

Who frequently slept in the pantry,

After throwing a