T he founding Victorian texts of nonsense thrive on what is queer. They also give a strange currency to the word itself. Edward Lear, for example, noted that 'some think him ill-tempered and queer' and described the Old Man of Cashmere as 'scroobious and queer'. 1 Meanwhile, the heroine of Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, fanning herself in an underground hall, reflects on how queer 'everything' is: * * * Edward Lear was posthumously associated with a book called Queery Leary

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... onsense (1911) and, rather than being leery of it, positively relished the rhyme of