Limerick Trivia

or little known Limerick stuff

Elizabeth Gargus was reinstated in her job as a high school teacher in Birmingham Alabama in 1981 and was awarded $7,500 by a Federal judge after she was fired for giving a copy of Limericks: Too Gross by Isaac Asimov and John Ciardi to the senior class president as a graduation present.

   

Vyvyan Holland author of An Explosion of Limericks and Ray Allen Billington author of Limericks Historical and Hysterical each died on the day his book was published.

 

 

Monsignor Ronald Knox once actually ran the following classified ad in The Times:
 

An Anglican curate in want of a second-hand portable font would exchange the same for a portrait (in frame) of the Bishop-elect of Vermont.

The first appearance of the word ‘Limerick’ (referring to a five-line verse) in print was in The Cantab, the Cambridge student magazine, on 6 October 1898.  The table of contents labeled a new feature “Illustrated Limericks.”  The first of these Illustrated Limericks was about a ‘dandified swell.’

The first known use of the word ‘Limerick’ referring to a five-line verse was in a letter from Aubrey Beardsley, the artist, to Leonard Smithers circa 1 May 1896:

 
“I have tried to amuse myself by writing limericks on my troubles but have got no further than
 
There once was a young invalid
Whose lung would do nothing but bleed.”

The first book of Limericks (although they were not referred to as Limericks) was The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women , published by J. Harris and Son in London in 1820.

A stamp with a limerick on it;  ‘This stamp honoring poet Ogden Nash on the centennial of his birth is the  18th  stamp in the Literary Arts series.  A gentle satirist, Nash poked fun at human foibles without cynicism.  He wrote on many subjects, but all of his poems expressed his wry wit and demonstrated his playfulness with language.