The Limerick. 1700 Examples, with Notes, Variants and Index

Paris: Les Hautes Êtudes, 1953. 4to, xiii, [3], 517, [3]pp. Original cream wrappers printed in red and black, in the original glassine; light foxing to the untrimmed edges of the text block, rear panel of glassine toned, otherwise a fine unopened copy. § Only edition of Legman's meticulous collection of limericks, most obscene. 'The largest collection of Limericks ever published, erotic or otherwise. Less than two thirds of these seventeen hundred examples had ever before appeared in print, as they were gathered from oral sources. Gershon Legman, the anonymous editor, provides variant lines, couplets and conclusions, with variants cited for geographical and personal names, and a full index of names and rhymes. Gershon's notes are scholarly, as opposed to Norman Douglas's mock-scholarly one, but the latter are quoted." (Norman).