"Although the "New English Dictionary" records the first usage in England in 1898 and in the United States in 1902, in recent years several earlier examples have been documented, the earliest being an 1880 reference, in a Saint John, New Brunswick newspaper, to an apparently well-known tune,
The limerick form was popularized by Edward Lear in his first "Book of Nonsense" (1846) and a later work, "More Nonsense, Pictures, Rhymes, Botany, etc".