Only one verse form exists that the English language can claim as its own invention: the limerick.

Five lines, two rhymes, and a laugh at the end. A jest that everyone believes is theirs to write, and that nearly everyone who’s picked up a pen has tried. The people’s verse. Its popularity has no rival in English language poetry.

The fact of that popularity begins with one man, Edward Lear, a Victorian artist and illustrator who published A Book of Nonsense in 1848. Nonsense was a new concept in the dour world of Victorian England, and Lear’s contemporaries embraced it with a delight that was almost child-like. When Lear expanded A Book of Nonsense in 1863, its 112 illustrated verses propelled the limerick to celebrity status.

Such verses weren't called limericks then; the term wouldn't exist for at least another generation.

And Edward Lear's verses weren't proper limericks, in the sense we understand today.

They traced their heritage directly to a little book published in 1820, called The History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women. The verses Lear found there lacked a limerick's most important part - an ending that adds a twist and makes us chuckle. They finished, instead, with the first line's ending, plus an adjective telling us how we should feel about that particular Old Woman. Each was an economical salute to the moral tale.

There dwelt an Old Woman at Exeter,
When visitors came it sore vexed her,
So for fear they should eat,
She lock'd up all the meat;
This stingy Old Woman of Exeter.

Lear embraced this format utterly, and used it almost without exception in his own 112 verses. All he changed was the adjective's purpose, abandoning judgement (mostly) and celebrating nonsense.

There was an Old Man with a nose,
Who said, “If you choose to suppose
That my nose is too long, you are certainly wrong!”
That remarkable Man with a nose.”

What an anti-climax!

There's no twist, no joke beyond the humour of his initial premise. He finishes by repeating the rhyme and substance of what he'd said at the start.

To a modern eye, nearly all of Edward Lear's limericks have letdown endings. They lack a fifth line - literally as well as figuratively, since he merged the two short lines and reduced the total number to four.

In this book, I set myself the challenge of crafting a proper limerick from each of Lear's 112 nonsense verses. It hasn't been easy, given the rhymes that Lear chose, and the results stray far and frequently from the original; but in restoring the fifth line, I hope I've added a reason to laugh at the end.

They're all here, from An Old Man With a Nose to A Young Lady Whose Bonnet, and everything in between. All of Lear's original verses, plus a brand new matching limerick for each.

Two hundred and twenty-four limericks. After Lear. Including Lear. And a fifth line.