Object details

Object number

8.a.3.5

Creator(s)

• Edward Lear (Greater London, 1812 - 1888, San Remo) - illustrator
• Edward Lear (Greater London, 1812 - 1888, San Remo) - author
• Edward Dalziel (Wooler, 1817 - 1905, Hampstead) - engraver
• George Dalziel (Wooler, 1815 - 1902, London) - engraver
• Frederick Warne And Co. (active London, 1800 - 1870) - publisher

Title

A Book of Nonsense

Date

about 1870

Medium

Printed ink on paper

Language

English

Publication Place

London

Binding Description

Royal blue textile binding with black and gilded illustration and lettering on front cover and spine

Description

[2], 111 leaves. : ill. ; 14 x 23 cm.

Provenance

Entered Isabella Stewart Gardner's collection at an unknown date.

Dimensions

27 x 23.5 x 3 cm (10 5/8 x 9 1/4 x 1 3/16 in.)

Commentary

This book is full of illustrated limericks, or humorous short poems. Isabella Stewart Gardner’s friend, the composer Margaret Ruthven Lang (1867-1962), set many of these poems to music. The New England Magazine considered Lang’s adaptation of Lear’s poetry to be “the essence of refined wit, the best that America has ever produced in music.”

Gallery

Long Gallery

Bibliography

Susan Sinclair and Philip B. Eppard. Catalogue of Children’s Books from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Collection and the Personal Libraries of John Lowell and Isabella Stewart Gardner (Boston, 1988), p. 22, no. 21.

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