Witty, uproarious and tongue-in-cheek, over the past five years Martin Rowson’s limericks and cartoons have retold the story of world literature, appearing each week in the Independent on Sunday. Now collected together for the first time, The Limerickiad takes us from Gilgamesh to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, showcasing the author’s reverence for the original texts alongside a healthy dollop of hilarity and pure filth.

The Limerickiad promises to do for literature what the Punch/Methuen classic 1066 and All That did for history. Features 20 cartoons drawn especially for the book.

Martin Rowson is a multi-award winning cartoonist whose work appears regularly in the Guardian, the Independent on Sunday, the Daily Mirror and many other publications. His books include graphic adaptations of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1990), Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (2010) and a forthcoming updated version of Gulliver’s Travels. Among his other books are The Dog Allusion (2008), F*ck: The History of the World in 65 Incidents (2008) and Stuff (2008), a memoir longlisted for the 2007 Samuel Johnson Prize.