Customer Reviews

The Humorous Verse of Lewis Carroll

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For those who think verse is boring and effete, take these Lewis Carroll treasures and discover a true joy of poetry! Magical, innocent, and just plain strange, Carroll brings out the wonder of the imagination through jaunty verse. He also wrote some beautiful and not-widely-known love poems. This is one for the bookshelf in all our hearts

This edition contains the complete verse of the author of 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking -Glass.' It contains parodies on the sentimental verse of his day,and verbal inventions such as coin-words and portmanteau, two-words in one inventions( slithy = slim, and lithe). It builds a world of play in words all its own. Just looking at some of the wordplay I see how James Joyce must have ' understand well' what was going on here.

Many of the lines and characters of this work have become part of the ordinary vocabulary of the English language. The rule seems to be that in this internal rhyming world Carroll followed his own advice " Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care of itself"

Here is the first stanza of one of his most well- known examples, "Jabberwocky"

'Twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wave:

All mimsy were the borogoves

And the mome roths outgrabe"

But if the nonsense verse is not to the reader's taste there is of course much else more readily understandable 'woetry'

How many times in this life of ours do we for instance return to the insight given in the immortal ' Humpty Dumpty"

"All the kings horses and all the kings men, could not put Humpty Dumpty together again".

In this collection Carroll's work is, however, all together for what will most likely be the delight of the reader ready to ' twaste 'it.

I don't know why but you really want to learn this stuff by heart so you can recite it to yourself in odd moments. Some of it is incredibly witty and it bounds along in a very good rhythm. The poems are quite different from each other and reflect Lewis Carroll's many moods. He must have been a complex and interesting person, as well as an amusing one.

My recent reading of the Historic Novel "Alice I have been" prompted me to revisit this favorite.

This is a collection of some well known poems (including "The Walrus and the Carpenter" and "The Jabberwocky") and some very un-known. My favorites lie within the verses about and reminiscent of Wonderland. Some of his other verses are heavy with political inference, and without context are difficult to enjoy.

Because Charles Dodgeson was in real life a math professor, he included many puzzles in his stories. Most of these involved a play on words that the reader or listener must pay close attention to find.

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