Collections of an Only Child: Seventy Years a Bibliophile, the Library of Justin G. Schiller

(London, ca. 1861). Pen and sepia ink drawing on paper, with three-line ink manuscript limerick below image, by Lear. Unevenly browned. Approximately 6 x 8 in. (152 x 203 mm). In frame, 13 x 16 7/8 in. (330 x 429 mm).

"There was an old person of Mold who shrank from sensations of cold, So he purchased some muffs, some furs, and some fluffs; And wrapped himself up from the cold."

An original nonsense drawing and limerick by Edward Lear. A version of this drawing was published in the 1861 third edition of A Book of Nonsense (p. 48). Justin Schiller records one other version, in a collection at the Houghton Library, University of Harvard (Nonsensus, Cross-Referencing Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense, 1988, p. 81). The Houghton copy has a number of slight textual variants. The present version follows the printed text.