Carolyn Wells

Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) was an American writer born in Rahway, New Jersey. She published a very large body of work, including detective novels, children’s books, anthologies and humorous verse, and was among the best-known American writers of nonsense and light verse in the early twentieth century.

The poems gathered here come from six books of her light verse: The Jingle Book (1899), illustrated by Oliver Herford; A Phenomenal Fauna (1901–02); Children of Our Town (1902); At the Sign of the Sphinx, Second Series (1906), a collection of verse riddles and charades; The Seven Ages of Childhood (1909); and The Re-echo Club (1913), a set of parodies of famous poets.