This anthology includes the best of three collections of comic and curious verse which first appeared with enormous success in the 1950s. It covers the whole tradition of English and American comic verse writing from the masters - Hood, Lear, Carrol -, to anonymous lampoonists of the 18th-century, up to the present day. The reader will find many firm favourites, as well as recent discoveries - satire, nonsense, parody, punnings and lampoons - making up an entertaining collection.