Abstract: Edward Lear’s A Book of Nonsense is a foundational work in modern children’s literature. This essay traces its development from early manuscript limericks to the first two-volume edition of 1846 and then examines the 1855 one-volume edition, identifying four distinct states and reconstructing its complex production history. A census of known variants of this second edition is included in an Appendix. The 1861 edition’s added limericks are discussed, and finally Lear’s evolving approach to book design is compared with Lewis Carroll’s attention to the smallest details of his publications. The evolution of the Book of Nonsense is shown to have provided a model for Carroll’s work and that of the authors of the “golden age of children’s literature.”
M. Graziosi (Sat,) studied this question.