Light Versers Hall of Fame

Quotes, poems, and biographies of hall of famers abound on the web. Certain special sites are linked on our Light Verse Links page.

Richard Armour (1906-89) prolific writer of deft comic poems (including a famous quatrain often attributed to Nash: "Shake and shake/The catsup bottle./None will come,/And then a lot’ll.")

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) writer of popular comic poems, many of which purport to illustrate moral lessons

E.C. Bentley (Edmund Clerihew Bentley) (1875-1956) inventor of the clerihew

Morris Bishop (1893-1973) often anthologized writer of an abundance of funny verse

Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) (1832-1898) writer of parodies and nonsense poems, many of the most well-known of which appear in his popular children's books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871)

C.S. Calverley (Charles Stuart Calverley) (1831-84) writer of light verse much admired for its style

W.S. Gilbert (William Shenk Gilbert) (1836-1911) Gilbert’s dexterous and funny Bab Ballads (1868, 1872) employ the same facility displayed in his lyrics to the popular Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.

Harry Graham (1874-1963) inventor of Ruthless Rhymes

Edward Lear (1812-88) Lear’s "The Owl and the Pussycat" and "The Jumblies" are among the most popular children’s poems ever written. He also helped to popularize the limerick.

Phyllis McGinley (1905-78) A lot of McGinley's light verse is about suburbia.

Don Marquis (1878-1937) Marquis’ poems about cockroach Archy and Mehitabel the cat are probably the most popular comic poems written in free verse. Archy, their putative author, was a reincarnated free verse poet.

Ogden Nash (1902-71) Nash’s outlandish rhymes and disregard of meter and line length created a popular and easily recognizable style. He was also a talented writer of funny poems in traditional meters.

Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) famous for her acerbic wit

W.M. Praed (Winthrop Mackworth Praed) (1802-39) author of highly polished and witty light verse

Matthew Prior (1664-1721) poet and diplomat best remembered for his epigrams and for the humorous "Alma" (1715)

Robert Service (1874-1958) author of "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and other tales in verse

Shel Silverstein (1932-99) creator of popular poems and drawings for children, collected in Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974), A Light in the Attic (1981), and Falling Up (1996)

Ernest Lawrence Thayer (1863-1940) author of "Casey at the Bat"