The Mind Creative AUGUST 2014 | Page 22

The Mind Creative The following limerick, in fact, summarises Legman’s views very well indeed! The limerick packs laughs anatomical Into space that is quite economical. But the good ones I've seen So seldom are clean And the clean ones so seldom are comical Popularity of the limerick The limerick appeared throughout Irish and British literature in the mid-19th century, most notably in Edward Lear’s A Book of Nonsense. Lear is widely considered to be responsible for the popularity of this form of poetry. In fact, the magazine Punch ran limerick contests and started the “limerick craze”. By the end of the century, famous poets and writers like Alfred Lord Tennyson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Mark Twain experimented with the form. Limericks became the subject of weekly newspaper contests, with large prizes awarded and the easy creation of limericks infused with h [[