Description
Book SynopsisJames Williams’s account, the first book-length critical study of the poet since the 1980s, sets out to re-introduce Lear and to accord him his proper place: as a major Victorian figure of continuing appeal and relevance, and especially as a poet of beauty, comedy, and profound ingenuity.
Trade Review'A treat – scholarly, incisive and moving, with brilliantly surprising readings of Lear's work'.
Jenny Uglow, author of
Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense'A wonderfully engaging and revealing book, one that talks a great deal of sense about nonsense (without talking
too much sense). The imaginative incisiveness of Williams's reading – and the deftness of his writing – make this the best study of Lear's poetry we have.'
Matthew Bevis, University of Oxford
'This is a study whose significance for the field belies its physical size, standing not only as the best account of Lear’s poetry yet published, but as a work which ought to reorient our sense of Lear’s place in the history of nineteenth-century poetry. […] Williams’s patient explication of the truth it speaks about both sense and nonsense should be regarded as a foundational articulation of Lear’s poetic achievement.'
Benjamin Westwood,
The Review of English StudiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgements
Biographical Outline
Abbreviations and References
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1: Beginnings
This Mystery of Eggs
Little Folks Merry
The Pobble who has no Toes
2: Odd Beasts
Amiable Frogs
Virulent Bulls, Triumphant Chimpanzees
The Owl and the Pussy-cat
3: The Scroobious Traveller
Agonies of Packing
Gooseberries and Gringhegi
The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò
4: The Morbids
Never . . . again
Full of Despair
Worse Things
The Dong with a Luminous Nose
Coda
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
