Nonsense cover art

Nonsense

Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Nonsense

By: Edward Lear
Narrated by: James Masterton
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £5.99

Buy Now for £5.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Edward Lear was an English artist and poet who loved writing nonsense. He is known for popularizing the limerick, a bouncy sort of poem that is often nonsensical and amusing rather than formal or traditional. These poems, stories, and songs are utterly silly, with much of the charm being in the rhythm and rhymes with which they can be read aloud.

The Book of Nonsense was anonymously published in 1846, with 72 limericks about all sorts of nonsense subjects, like an old man with a beard full of birds, a volcano scientist whose work gets ironically burnt in a volcano, and a woman whose nose was so long she needed a hired hand to carry it. These poems are nonsensical and silly.

Nonsense Songs and Stories was another of Edward Lear’s nonsense publications. Unlike Book of Nonsense, this book consists mainly of longer songs and stories instead of quick limericks. The songs and stories are still silly though, about personified insects and objects, children sailing to islands made of chocolates and talking vegetables. This book contains the author’s personal favorite of his songs: “The Owl and the Pussycat”, about an owl and cat sailing on a boat made of honey and a piece of paper money, exploring the world and falling in love.

Public Domain (P)2021 Spotify Audiobooks
Classics Cats

Listeners also enjoyed...

Nonsense Verse cover art
Tales of Britain cover art
A Madman's Diary, and Other Stories cover art
The Blue Fairy Book cover art
The History of Mr. Polly (Annotated) cover art
Casanova cover art
The Flying Inn cover art
Three Men in a Boat (AmazonClassics Edition) cover art
Orlando cover art
London Labour and the London Poor cover art
Dickens' Women cover art
Between the Acts cover art
Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales cover art
Lark Rise cover art
Lolly Willowes cover art
England, Our England cover art
No reviews yet