The Hunting of the Snark

by Lewis Carroll, Henry Holman (Illustrator)

Overview

The peculiar wit and imagination of Lewis Carroll are once again in evidence in The Hunting of the Snark, his epic nonsense poem which first appeared in 1876. Unlike the earlier Alice books, this is a much darker work, in which 10 characters whose names begin with B, disappear, go mad, and generally find themselves struggling to navigate an impossible path through a nonsensical world. Throughout the poem there is a prevailing atmosphere of disorder and chaos, heightened by Carroll's characteristic use of "portmanteau" words (such as "uffish", "beamish" and "fumious") and descriptions of grotesque creatures such as the Bandersnatch and the Jubjub bird. The meaning of the poem, and of the Snark itself, has been the subject of much debate. In his preface Carroll said "In answer to your question, 'What did you mean the Snark was?' will you tell your friend that I meant that the Snark was a Boojum. I trust that she and you will now feel quite satisfied and happy." Whatever its meaning, The Hunting of the Snark remains a fascinating read. This new edition is a facsimile of the 1876 original, with reproductions of the original illustrations by Henry Holiday and is bound in red cloth with luxury gold embossing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780712358132
Publisher:	British Library Publishing
Publication date:	01/01/2011
Edition description:	Facsimile
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	8 - 18 Years

About the Author

Lewis Carroll was the pen-name of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was appointed lecturer in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford in 1855, where he spent the rest of his life. His most famous works, Alice's Adventures Under Ground and Through the Looking-Glass, were originally written for Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of his college.

Date of Birth:

January 27, 1832

Date of Death:

January 14, 1898

Place of Birth:

Daresbury, Cheshire, England

Place of Death:

Guildford, Surrey, England

Education:

Richmond School, Christ Church College, Oxford University, B.A., 1854; M.A., 1857

Website:

http://www.lewis-carroll-birthplace.org.uk/

Read an Excerpt

From the Foreword

There exists a certain kind of mind that is uncomfortable with ambiguity, nonsense, and the creative imagination. Such persons attempt to reduce the abstruse to some prosaic explication, which they then often insist is the only way to look at it, and surely was the original intent of the author, whose mind they know better than he or she did. This has frequently been the fate of the Snark and, for that matter, Carroll's two masterful Alice books, for those of limited intelligence (intellect, which such persons might possess in abundance, is another matter entirely) who 'read' the poem in their own idiosyncratic way. (Analogously, we in the States elected a man as our leader who sees things exactly as he wishes to see them and allows no such things as facts or truth to stand in his way.)

Contrariwise, as Tweedledee would say, more enlightened minds can rejoice in profound and perplexing-another term might be 'poetic'-works of art. Hermeneutics (the art of interpretation) can better be used to demonstrate how a text could be construed a certain way, thereby proving, with great humor and wisdom, just how infinite is its depth. Fortunately, we are in such hands with this present edition, which does not dictate but rather wittily utilizes illustrations to the poem to memorialize a moment in political time, the bewildering administration of Donald J. Trump and his cronies, by assigning caricatures of his staff to the expedition's crew.

As Ben Hecht put it in A Guide for the Bedevilled (1945), 'Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.' Already at this writing some of the persons caricatured in this edition have left the administration-Anthony Scaramucci, Reince Priebus, and Stephen K. Bannon-but that does not affect George Walker's superb caricatures, nor this edition serving as an aide-mémoire of a baffling yet historic time.

-Mark Burstein, President Emeritus of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America

Table of Contents

Preface

Fit I. The Landing

Fit II. The Bellman’s Speech

Fit III. The Baker’s Tale

Fit IV. The Hunting

Fit V. The Beaver’s Lesson

Fit VI. The Barrister’s Dream

Fit VII. The Banker’s Fate

Fit VIII. The Vanishing

Editorial Reviews

With the release of this gorgeous facsimile edition, readers today can experience the poem just as Victorian readers did. This story of a chaotic quest is a delight in any format, but here, bound in a vivid red-and-gold cover, the poem isn’t the only work of art, the book is too.

|Los Angeles Times

A fabulous poem—hilarity and wit,
a balance of pleasure and peril,
was writ by none other, in piqué or in fit,
than the beloved Lewis Carroll.
 
A reproduction more lovingly made
has doubtful ever been seen.
Imprinted with gold of the highest grade,
Most households will need seventeen.

New City

“With the release of this gorgeous facsimile edition, readers today can experience the poem just as Victorian readers did. This story of a chaotic quest is a delight in any format, but here, bound in a vivid red-and-gold cover, the poem isn’t the only work of art, the book is too.

Los Angeles Times

"Delightfully surreal...save this book for the brightest and most adventurous young word-worms on your holiday shopping list...Singh's daring illustrations will appeal to older children eager to leave the world of candy-colored cuteness behind."
—New Yorker

"At last, the legend of the brave, if peculiar, companions who set out to bag a snark (arming themselves "with forks and with hope") gets lavish treatment from [Mahendra] Singh....These may be the fittest illustrations ever created for Carroll's distinctively Victorian nonsense concoctions."
—Laura Miller, Salon

"[C]hallenging and delightful."
—Marilyn Dahl, Shelf Awareness


"It is not children who ought to read the words of Lewis Carroll."
—G.K. Chesterton

"Singh's black-and-white surrealistic treatment of Carroll's classic poem is perfect...takes the ideology of Carroll's nonsense to new visual levels. Far beyond a simplistic, literal depiction of the poem, each panel is thoughtfully created, filled with puzzles, jokes, and allusions."
—Library Journal

From the Publisher