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The Hunting of the Snark

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Template:Short description Template:About Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox book

The Hunting of the Snark, subtitled An Agony, in Eight Fits, is a poem by the English writer Lewis Carroll. It is typically categorised as a nonsense poem. Written between 1874 and 1876, it borrows the setting, some creatures, and eight portmanteau words from Carroll's earlier poem "Jabberwocky" in his children's novel Through the Looking-Glass (1871).

Macmillan published The Hunting of the Snark in the United Kingdom at the end of March 1876, with nine illustrations by Henry Holiday. It had mixed reviews from reviewers, who found it strange. The first printing of the poem consisted of 10,000 copies. There were two reprints by the conclusion of the year; in total, the poem was reprinted 17 times between 1876 and 1908. The poem also has been adapted for musicals, movies, opera, plays, and music.

The narrative follows a crew of ten trying to hunt the Snark, a creature which may turn out to be a highly dangerous Boojum. The only crew member to find the Snark quietly vanishes, leading the narrator to explain that the Snark was a Boojum after all.

Carroll dedicated the poem to young Gertrude Chataway, whom he met in the English seaside town Sandown on the Isle of Wight in 1875. Included with many copies of the first edition of the poem was Carroll's religious tract, An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves "Alice".

Various meanings in the poem have been proposed, among them existential angst, an allegory for tuberculosis, and a mockery of the Tichborne case.

While Carroll denied knowing the meaning behind the poem,Template:Sfn he agreed in an 1897 reply to a reader's letter with an interpretation of the poem as an allegory for the pursuit of happiness.<ref name="Letter2MaryBarber">Letter by C.L. Dodgson to Mary Barber, January 12, 1897: "To the best of my recollection, I had no other meaning in my mind, when I wrote it: but people have since tried to find the meanings in it. The one I like best (which I think is partly my own) is that it may be taken as an Allegory for the Pursuit of Happiness."</ref>Template:Sfn Henry Holiday, the illustrator of the poem, considered the poem a "tragedy".Template:Efn

PlotEdit

SettingEdit

The Hunting of the Snark shares its fictional setting with Lewis Carroll's earlier poem "Jabberwocky" published in his 1871 children's novel Through the Looking-Glass.Template:Sfn Eight nonsense words from "Jabberwocky" appear in The Hunting of the Snark: bandersnatch, beamish, frumious, galumphing, jubjub, mimsiest (which previously appeared as mimsy in "Jabberwocky"), outgrabe, and uffish.Template:Sfn In a letter to the mother of his young friend Gertrude Chataway, Carroll described the domain of the Snark as "an island frequented by the jubjub and the bandersnatchTemplate:Sndno doubt the very island where the jabberwock was slain."Template:Sfn

CharactersEdit

The crew consists of ten members, where all but one description of the members begin with the letter B:Template:Sfn a Bellman, the leader; a BootsTemplate:Efn (the only member of the crew without an illustration);Template:Sfn a maker of Bonnets and Hoods (the only description which does not begin with the letter B); a Barrister, who settles arguments among the crew; a Broker, who can appraise the goods of the crew; a Billiard-marker, who is greatly skilled; a Banker, who possesses all of the crew's money; a Beaver, who makes lace and has saved the crew from disaster several times; a Baker, who can only bake wedding cake, forgets his belongings and his name, but possesses courage; and a Butcher, who can only kill beavers.Template:Sfn

  • Snark Bellman.jpg

    Bellman

  • Snark Bonnet Maker.jpg

    Maker of Bonnets and Hoods

  • Snark Barrister.jpg

    Barrister

  • Snark Broker.jpg

    Broker

  • Snark Billiard Marker.jpg

    Billiard-marker

  • Snark Banker.jpg

    Banker

  • Snark Beaver.jpg

    Beaver

  • Snark Baker.jpg

    Baker

  • Snark Butcher.jpg

    Butcher

SummaryEdit

{{#invoke:Listen|main}}

File:Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 6.jpg
Henry Holiday's illustration of the hunt. Note accompanying Hope (midground, with anchor) and Care (background, shrouded).

After crossing the sea guided by the Bellman's map of the Ocean (a blank sheet of paper) the hunting party arrives in a strange land, and the Bellman tells them the five signs by which a snarkTemplate:Efn can be identified. The Bellman warns them that some snarks are highly dangerous boojums; on hearing this, the Baker faints. Once revived, the Baker recalls that his uncle warned him that if the Snark turns out to be a boojum, the hunter will "softly and suddenly vanish away, and never be met with again".Template:Sfn The Baker confesses that this possibility terrifies him.

The hunt begins:

<poem>

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They pursued it with forks and hope; They threatened its life with a railway-share;Template:Efn They charmed it with smiles and soap.Template:Sfn

</poem>

Along the way, the Butcher and Beaver, previously mutually wary, become fast friends after they hear the cry of a jubjub bird and the Butcher ends up giving the Beaver a lesson on maths and zoology. The Barrister, meanwhile, sleeps, and dreams of witnessing a court trial of a pig accused of deserting its sty, with a snark as its defence lawyer.

During the hunt, the Banker is attacked by a bandersnatch, and loses his sanity after trying to bribe the creature.

The Baker rushes ahead of the party and calls out that he has found a snark, but when the others arrive, he has mysteriously disappeared.

<poem>

They hunted till darkness came on, but they found Not a button, or feather, or mark, By which they could tell that they stood on the ground Where the Baker had met with the Snark.

In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away— For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.Template:Sfn

</poem>

DevelopmentEdit

Two explanations of which event in Carroll's life gave rise to The Hunting of the Snark have been offered. Biographer Morton N. Cohen connects the creation of The Hunting of the Snark with the illness of Carroll's cousin and godson, the twenty-two-year-old Charlie Wilcox.Template:Sfn On 17 July 1874, Carroll travelled to Guildford, Surrey, to care for him for six weeks, while the young man struggled with tuberculosis.Template:Sfn<ref name="Hark the Snark">Template:Cite book</ref> The next day, while taking a walk in the morning after only a few hours of sleep, Carroll thought of the poem's final line: "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see."Template:Sfn

Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller suggest that the event that inspired the poem was the sudden death of Carroll's beloved uncle, Robert Wilfred Skeffington Lutwidge, caused by a patient in 1873 during Lutwidge's time as an inspector of lunatic asylums. They support their analysis with parts of the poem, such as the Baker's uncle's advice to seek the snark with "thimbles, forks, and soap", which, according to Torrey and Miller, were all items the lunatic asylum inspectors checked during their visits.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Holiday and Carroll had some disagreements on the artwork. Carroll initially objected to Holiday's personification of hope and care, but agreed to the change, when Holiday explained that he had only intended to add another layer of meaning to the word "with".<ref name="Henry Holiday excerpts"/> However, Carroll refused his illustration of the boojum, preferring that the creature go without a depiction,Template:Sfn and made him change his initial portrayal of the Broker, as it could have been perceived as antisemitic.Template:Sfn

When finally published, the poem comprised 141 stanzas of four lines each,Template:Sfn with internal rhymes in the first and third lines of irregular stanzas appearing in the poem from the second fit onwards.Template:Sfn Martin GardnerTemplate:Sfn annotated to The Hunting of the Snark that Elizabeth Sewell pointed out in The Field of Nonsense (1973) that a line in Carroll's poem has a similarity to a line in a limerick ("There was an old man of Port Grigor...") by Edward Lear.

IllustrationsEdit

To illustrate the poem Carroll chose Henry Holiday, whom he had met in 1869<ref name="Henry Holiday excerpts"/> or 1870.Template:Sfn At the time Carroll approached him to ask if he could create three illustrations for the poem, Carroll had completed three "fits", as he called the parts of his poemTemplate:Sndfit can mean either canto or convulsionTemplate:SfnTemplate:Snd"The Landing", "The Hunting", and "The Vanishing".Template:Sfn He intended to title it The Boojum and include it in his fantasy novel Sylvie and Bruno, which was unfinished at the time.Template:Sfn However, in late October 1875, Carroll thought about having it published during Christmas; this proved impossible, as the wood engraving for the illustrations needed three months to be complete.Template:Sfn By the time Holiday had completed the sketches and sent them to Carroll, Carroll had already created a new fit requiring an illustration. They worked this way until Holiday had created nine illustrations as well as the front cover and the back cover of the book.<ref name="Henry Holiday excerpts">Template:Cite book</ref> Thus, among the ten illustrations shown below, one illustration is not by Holiday.<ref>The front page of The Hunting of the Snark (1876) states: "with nine illustrations by Henry Holiday". The assumption is that the "Ocean Chart" (aka "The Bellman's Map") has been arranged by Carroll. Source: Template:Cite journal</ref> The "Ocean Chart" is typographic art whereas electrotypes made from Joseph Swain's woodblock engravings were used to print Holiday's illustrations.

  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 1.jpg

    The Bellman landing the Banker by entwining a finger in the Banker's hair

  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 2.jpg
  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 3.jpg

    The Butcher (left) and the Beaver (right) looking sideways

  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 4.jpg

    The ocean chart (which is blank)

  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 5.jpg

    The Baker whose belongings were left behind on the beach

  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 6.jpg
  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 7.jpg

    The Butcher doing maths

  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 8.jpg

    The Barrister's dream of the trial of the pig, with the Snark shown draped in a cloth in the foreground acting as defence barrister; the Bellman's bell is ringing in his ear in the lower left

  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 9.jpg

    The Bellman, Banker, and Butcher holding the Beaver

  • Lewis Carroll - Henry Holiday - Hunting of the Snark - Plate 10.jpg

There is no depiction of the Snark, nor of Boots. However, based on a draft<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} shows a redrawn image from a concept draft by C. L. Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll). The drawing was part of a lot consisting of an 1876 edition of the "Hunting of the Snark" and a letter (dated 1876-01-04) by Dodgson to Henry Holiday. The lot was auctioned by Doyle New York (Rare Books, Autographs & Photographs – Sale 13BP04 – Lot 553) offered in November 2013.</ref> by Carroll, the snark was allowed to show up in an illustration by Holiday, where it appeared in a dream of the Barrister.

The illustration to the chapter The Banker's Fate might contain pictorial allusions to the etching The Image Breakers by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder,<ref name="MarysaDemoor">Template:Cite book</ref> to William Sidney Mount's painting The Bone Player and to a photograph by Benjamin Duchenne used for a drawing in Charles Darwin's 1872 book The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals.<ref name="KnightLetter99">Template:Cite journal {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Publication historyEdit

Template:Quote box Upon the printing of the book on 29 March 1876, Carroll gave away eighty signed copies to his favourite young friends; in a typical fashion, he signed them with short poems, many of them acrostics of the child's name.Template:Sfn He dedicated The Hunting of the Snark to Gertrude Chataway, whom he had befriended in summer 1875 at the English seaside town Sandown on the Isle of Wight.Template:Sfn He finished the dedication a month after befriending her, a double acrostic poem that not only spelled out her name, but contained a syllable of her name in the first line of each stanza.Template:Sfn The stanza of his first draft concluded "Rest on a friendly knee, the tale to ask / That he delights to tell."Template:Sfn The poem was printed in The Hunting of the Snark with permission from Chataway's mother.Template:Sfn

Included with many copies of the first edition of The Hunting of the Snark was Carroll's three-page, religious tract to his young readers, An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves "Alice".Template:Sfn<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Largely written on 5 February 1876, An Easter Greeting explores the concept of innocence and eternal life through biblical allusions and literary allusions to Romantic writers William Blake and William Wordsworth.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Gardner suggests that Carroll included the tract as a way of balancing the dark tone of the poem.Template:Sfn Scholar Selwyn Goodacre speculates that, as many copies of first-edition of the poem contain the tract, there is a possibility that all first editions originally had a copy of An Easter Greeting.<ref name="Listing & Translations"/>

Reception and legacyEdit

The first printing of The Hunting of the Snark consisted of 10,000 copies.Template:Sfn By the conclusion of 1876, it had seen two reprints, with a total of 18,000<ref name="Dodgson handbook">Template:Cite book</ref> or 19,000 copies circulating.Template:Sfn In total, the poem was reprinted seventeen times between 1876 and 1908.<ref name="Dodgson handbook"/>

The Hunting of the Snark received largely mixed reviews from Carroll's contemporary reviewers.<ref name="Hark the Snark"/> The AcademyTemplate:'s Andrew Lang criticised Carroll's decision to use poetry instead of prose and its too appealing title.<ref name="Hark the Snark"/> The Athenaeum described it as "the most bewildering of modern poetry", wondering "if he has merely been inspired to reduce to idiotcy as many readers and more especially reviewers, as possible".<ref name="Hark the Snark"/> According to Vanity Fair, Carroll's work had progressively worsened after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), with The Hunting of the Snark being the worst of his works and "not worthy [of] the name of nonsense".<ref name="Hark the Snark"/> While The Spectator wrote that the poem's final line had the potential to become a proverb, it criticised the poem as "a failure" that might have succeeded with more work from the author.<ref name="Hark the Snark"/> The Saturday Review wrote that the poem offered "endless speculation" as to the true identity of the Snark, although the unnamed reviewer felt that the familiar nature of Carroll's nonsense weakened its effect for the reader.<ref name="Hark the Snark"/> Conversely, The Graphic praised the poem as a welcome departure from the Alice books, and called it "a glorious piece of nonsense", that could appeal to all Alice fans.<ref name="Hark the Snark"/>

"The Hunting of the Snark" has in common some elements with Carroll's other works. It shares its author's love of puns on the word "fit" with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,Template:Sfn and mentions of "candle-ends" and "toasted cheese" with his supernatural poem Phantasmagoria.Template:Sfn Additionally all three works include the number "42".Template:Sfn Another of Carroll's children's novels, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) makes a reference to the Boojum.Template:Sfn

Other illustrators of The Hunting of the Snark include Peter Newell (1903), Edward A. Wilson (1932), Mervyn Peake (1941), Aldren Watson (1952), Tove Jansson (1959), Helen Oxenbury (1970), Byron Sewell (1974), John Minnion (1974), Harold Jones (1975), Ralph Steadman (1975), Quentin Blake (1976), Frank Hinder (1989) and Brian Puttock (1997).<ref name="Listing & Translations"/>

Cultural impactEdit

File:Cirio columnaris, boojum tree.jpg
The Boojum tree in Baja California, Mexico, takes its name from the poem.Template:Sfn

The Hunting of the Snark has seen various adaptations into musicals, opera, theatre, plays, and music,<ref name="Listing & Translations">Template:Cite book</ref> including a piece for trombone by Norwegian composer Arne Nordheim (1975)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> a jazz rendition (2009),<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and (in French translationTemplate:SndLa chasse au Snark) with music by Michel Puig for five actresses, eight actors and an instrumental ensemble of five players, premiered at the Festival d'Avignon in 1971.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The poem was turned into a £2 million budget West End musical The Hunting of the Snark by Mike Batt. In 2023 a film was released by Simon Davison.<ref>Internet Movie Database: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt22171734/</ref><ref name="TheSnarkologistV001F005">Template:Cite periodical</ref>

The poem has inspired literature, such as Jack London's The Cruise of the Snark (1911),<ref name="Listing & Translations"/> the science-fiction short story "Chaos, Coordinated" (1947) by John MacDougal,Template:Sfn Elspeth Huxley's With Forks and Hope (1964)Template:Sfn and the title of Kate Wilhelm's novella "With Thimbles, with Forks and Hope."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> American author Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was fond of the poem as a child.Template:Sfn

Additionally, it has also been alluded to in

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  • court rulings, such as in Parhat v. Gates (2008)<ref name=CnnSnark2008-06-08>

Template:Cite news </ref>

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> and American McGee's Alice (2000)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

AnalysisEdit

File:Fit the Eigth - The Vanishing.png
In Holiday's illustration to the final fit of The Hunting of the Snark, the Baker's hidden face and some part of the Boojum can be seen, according to some scholars.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Various themes have been suggested by scholars. According to biographer Florence Becker Lennon, the poem's "motif of loss of name or identity" is typical of Carroll's work.Template:Sfn Richard Kelly writes that the poem contains a "theme of annihilation".Template:Sfn Furthermore, Edward Guiliano feels that the Snark is within the nonsense tradition of Thomas Hood and, especially, W. S. Gilbert, the librettist of the famous Gilbert and Sullivan team. According to him, a case can be made for a direct influence of Gilbert's Bab Ballads on The Hunting of the Snark, based on the fact that Carroll was well-acquainted with the comic writing and the theatre of his age.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Widely varying interpretations of The Hunting of the Snark have been suggested: an allegory for tuberculosis,Template:Sfn a mockery of the Tichborne case, a satire of the controversies between religion and science, the repression of Carroll's sexuality, and a piece against vivisection, among others.Template:Sfn According to Cohen, the poem represents a "voyage of life", with the Baker's disappearance caused by his violation of the laws of nature, by hoping to unravel its mysteries.Template:Sfn Lennon sees The Hunting of the Snark as "a tragedy of frustration and bafflement", comparable to British actor Charlie Chaplin's early comedies.Template:Sfn

According to Kelly, The Hunting of the Snark is "Carroll's comic rendition of his fears of disorder and chaos, with the comedy serving as a psychological defense against the devastating idea of personal annihilation."Template:Sfn Kelly writes that the Bellman's Rule of Three ("What I tell you three times is true") and starting each character's name with the letter B are "notable attempts to create a sense of order and meaning out of chaos".Template:Sfn

F.C.S. Schiller, writing under the pseudonym "Snarkophilus Snobbs", interprets the poem as an allegory of Man's attempt to understand "the Absolute", and the members of the crew as representing different cultural approaches to the problem.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His interpretation of the Sixth Fit, "The Barrister's Dream" is particularly notable: He reads the trial of the pig for deserting its sty as symbolizing the ethical debate about whether suicide should be condemned as an immoral or culpable action. The pig who deserts its sty represents the suicidal person who abandons life. (Like the pig, he's guilty – but being dead, is not punishable.)

Martin Gardner sees the poem as dealing with existential angst,Template:Sfn and states that the Baker may be Carroll's satire of himself, pointing to the fact that the Baker was named after a beloved uncle, as was Carroll, and that the two were around the same age at the time of the writing of the poem.Template:Sfn Alternatively, Larry Shaw of the fan magazine Inside and Science Fiction Advertiser suggests that the Boots, being the Snark, actually murdered the Baker.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Sfn

Darien Graham-Smith suggests that The Hunting of the Snark stands for science (e.g. Charles Darwin's research), where the Boojum stands for religiously unsettling results of scientific research (e.g. Charles Darwin's findings).<ref name="GrahamSmith">Template:Cite thesis</ref>

Also allusions to religious issues had been suggested, like the Baker's 42 boxes being an allusion to Thomas Cranmer's Forty-Two Articles with a focus on the last article on eternal damnation,<ref name="TheCarrollian31">Template:Cite journal</ref> and Holiday's illustration to the last chapter containing a pictorial allusion to Cranmer's burning.<ref name="KnightLetter100">Template:Cite journal ({{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }})</ref><ref>British Museum, curator's comment on the print Faiths Victorie in Romes Crueltie: "This is one of a number of earlier prints used by Henry Holiday in his illustrations to Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark, 1876"</ref>

As for Henry Holiday's front cover illustration, it is suggested that it contains pictorial allusions to the Ditchley Portrait (c. 1592, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, location: National Portrait Gallery, London, UK) and to an allegorical English School painting of Queen Elizabeth I at Old Age with an allegory of Death and Father Time (c. 1610, unknown artist, location: Corsham Court, Wiltshire, UK). The back cover illustration could be a pictorial allusion to that portrait of the aged Queen as well.<ref name="IlluMag80">Template:Cite journal</ref>

See alsoEdit

File:SnarkRear.svg

NotesEdit

Template:Notelist

ReferencesEdit

CitationsEdit

Template:Reflist

BibliographyEdit

Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

Template:Sister project Template:Sister project Template:Sister project

  • Template:Cite book – downloadable formats from Project Gutenberg
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|CitationClass=web }} – website for organisation devoted to the study of the poem and snark-hunting.

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