Written to amuse

Comic verse has its masters and masterpieces. It also has its oddities, its happy accidents, its moments of inspired amateurism. If it can give rise to feats of dazzling verbal and metrical virtuosity, it can also come dangerously close to doggerel - and still work. In certain moods, it seems a game that anyone can play; and although there are reams of rhymed ineptitude to testify that it isn't so, it remains - more than any other branch of verse - the realm of the casual and the informal, the quirky and the miscellaneous. Praed and Hood and W.S. Gilbert (to say nothing of Chaucer and Byron) ought to come first, but an anthology which aims to take true measure of the territory also ought to find at least some space for the anonymous limerick, the music-hall monologue, and the little piece of nonsense that you can't get out of your head.

The Oxford Book of Comic Verse, edited by John Gross, is a rich collection of many different types of humorous verses that range from the subtle, down-to-earth and ingenious, to the macabre, ribald, and cheerful:

William Blake
An Epitaph

'I was buried near this Dyke,
That my friends may weep as much as they like.'

Edward Lear
Limericks, II (iii)

'There was an old man of Toulouse
Who purchased a new pair of shoes;
When they asked, 'Are they pleasant?' - He said, 'Not at present!'
That turbid old man of Toulouse.'

Other titles in the acclaimed 'Oxford Book of...' series include The Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse, The Oxford Book of English Short Stories, and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. Now available with a new look, each rich anthology is selected and introduced by a distinguished editor. The selection of verse or stories is unusually wide, and opens up a wonderful vista of writing old and new.

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