Bosh and Nonsense

In 1981, buried in the family papers in Naughton House, Fife, in Scotland, were discovered two sketchbooks bound in watered silk and leather. They contained 79 numbered nonsense rhymes and drawings penned for eleven-year-old Ada Duncan who had met Edward Lear in Nice with her mother in 1864. Many of them are entirely new, brimming with Lear's comic invention, and here reproduced for the first time.

Edward Lear responded to children with a garbled version of the world that appeared to delight both parties. The nonsense world that Lear constructed in alphabets natural histories, prose, rhymes, epic fables, nonsense verses and illustrations has survived the test of time to amuse succeeding generations. These newly discovered rhymes and drawings should prove a happy addition to this enduring world of Bosh and Nonsense.