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Primary sourceBook1876

The Hunting of the Snark

Lewis Carroll · 1876

Carroll's longest nonsense poem, an 'agony in eight fits' about a crew hunting a mysterious creature.

Carroll's longest nonsense poem, showing his sustained invention of language late in his writing career.

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Cover of a book with a tan cloth background and black ink design. A bearded man in a cap and striped clothes leans from a ship's rigging, holding a bell, against a night sky with stars. The title THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK is set across a sail-like design with ropes and rigging.
Henry Holiday (illustrator), cover of The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll, first edition, 1876.

About this source

What it is

The Hunting of the Snark, subtitled An Agony, in Eight Fits, is a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, written between 1874 and 1876 and published in 1876 with illustrations by Henry Holiday. It reuses invented words from "Jabberwocky" and follows a crew hunting a creature called the Snark.

Why it matters

The poem shows nonsense sustained at great length, and has been read as everything as an allegory for the pursuit of happiness, existential anxiety or even illness. It reveals Carroll's continuing fascination with invented language and absurd logic years after the Alice books.

Look closer

  • Why do you think the crew members are nearly all described by words beginning with B?
  • What effect does the poem's ending, where the Baker vanishes, have on how you read the whole story?
  • Why might readers and critics disagree so much about what the poem means?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Lewis Carroll on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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