Zoo Nonsense Verses

England. Hardcover. Homemade outer folder. Very Good. N.d., circa 1910. 4to. 26 by 21.5 cm. 54 loose handwritten pages with 25 original half page pen-and-ink drawings of animals, sometimes anthropomorphosed, sometimes doing kooky things, occasionally with humans as well, and always illustrative of the jolly doggerel verses. The lilting nonsense of the poems co-exists with the vaguely pedagogic thrust of them. As an example there is the following: "See! up and down and round about its cage the Leopard trots,/ As Deer in winter shed their horns, so Leopards shed their spots." The illustrations are charmingly naive -- the naivete is part of their charm (truncated) -- while the verses are unstintingly clever and amusing. We haven't a clue who the actual author was. The front cover shows a zebra painted in blue and black -- or is it violet, to correspond with the pseudonym? An outer folder, also homemade, encases the book. (Inventory #: 006078)