Through the silent-roaring ocean
           Did the Turtle swiftly go;
                  Holding fast upon his shell
           Rode the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
    With a sad primaeval motion
    Towards the sunset isles of Boshen
              Still the Turtle bore him well.
                  Holding fast upon his shell...

                                 from 'The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo'
   

Edward Lear (1812-1888) is one of the best-loved of English poets. His comic invention and unconstrained sense of the absurd have been enjoyed by generations of children, and treasured by adults conscious of the subtle melancholy that underlies the fun.

This collection includes all the favourite nonsense poems. Peter Swaab sets them alongside a generous selection from Lear's six travel books (including his three Journals of a Landscape Painter), first published between 1841 and 1870, and long out of print. For the first time Lear is presented as an adventurer, not only in the fabled lands of the Jumblies and the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo, but also in nineteenth-century Albania, Greece, Calabria and Corsica, where his encounters with the people and customs of these sometimes equally strange and challenging cultures are recorded with the same acute and rueful comic imagination.