Hunting of the Snark [Hardcover]

Lewis Carroll (Author), Martin Gardner (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1975

This interpretation of Lewis Carroll's poem offers a view of childhood. In this version, snarks are bombs hunted by a local gang of children in wartime Britain. As the hunt goes on, the conflict between self-interest and the general good grows; and friendships and alliances are built and broken.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Hunting Of The Snark
The Hunting Of The Snark: Dedication
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Lewis Carroll was the pen-name of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Born in 1832, he was educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he was appointed lecturer in mathematics in 1855, and where he spent the rest of his life. In 1861 he took deacon's orders, but shyness and a constitutional stammer prevented him from seeking the priesthood. He never married, but was very fond of children and spent much time with them. His most famous works, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872), were originally written for Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of his college. Charles Dodgson died of bronchitis in 1898. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 30 pages
• Publisher: Catalpa Press Ltd (February 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0904995011
• ISBN-13: 978-0904995015
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), the pen name of Oxford mathematician, logician, photographer and author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, is famous the world over for his fantastic classics "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," "Through the Looking Glass," "The Hunting of the Snark," "Jabberwocky," and "Sylvie and Bruno."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good companion to The Annotated Alice, July 17, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hunting of the Snark : An Agony in Eight Fits (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

I am a fan of Lewis Carroll, but somehow was unaware of the existence of an edition of "The Hunting of the Snark" with annotations. As someone who tremendously enjoys Martin Gardner's "Annotated Alice," I heartily recommend this book to like-minded readers. Gardner's annotations and introduction set the stage for the reader, putting the composition of the poem in its proper context in Victorian England, and in Lewis Carroll's life. And as with "Annotated Alice" the annotations are fascinating and amusing in their own right. "The Hunting of the Snark" is one of Carroll's lesser-appreciated (or at least lesser-known) works, and this paperback is an excellent introduction.

I noticed some confusion in the Amazon listings for this book, so let me clarify that the edition with Gardner's annotations is the paperback, and for illustrations it contains reproductions of Henry Holiday's original woodcuts from the 1800's. There are only eight pictures, and these are in old-fashioned style which may turn off some modern readers. This edition does not contain the illustrations - listed in the review of the hardcover editions - by Jonathan Dixon, nor the illustrations by Mervyn Peake also listed as available in hardcover from Amazon.

To Snark fans, though, I would unhesitatingly recommend both those editions as well. Dixon's is little-known, but excellent, the most profusely illustrated Snark, with pictures on every page in lush, gorgeously detailed and humorous pen and ink. It may still be available through the website of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, who published it in a small edition. Peake's drawings are also in beautiful black and white, and capture his own rather dark, quirky "Gormenghast" take on the poem. (A good companion, too, to the recently released editions of "Alice" with Peake's drawings.)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "A Perfect and Absolute Blank!", February 21, 2004

By 

cameron-vale "cameron-vale" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hunting of the Snark : An Agony in Eight Fits (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

This edition of Lewis Carroll's hilarious and haunting nonsense poem was originally published as THE ANNOTATED SNARK in 1962. Featuring Henry Holiday's original 1876 illustrations and a plethora of critical supplementary material, this is certainly the best edition of the poem currently available. Martin Gardner, who is perhaps best known for his ANNOTATED ALICE books, provides copious informative notes, many of them intended tongue in cheek, that explicate the myriad mysteries of Carroll's enigmatic sea voyage. Particularly noteworthy is Gardner's inclusion, as an appendix, of A COMMENTARY ON THE SNARK, a wonderfully loony "explanatory" essay by one Snarkophilus Snobbs that manages to brilliantly parody and demolish any attempt to provide solemn scholarly commentary on Carroll's silly but strangely disturbing work. Nonetheless, in his introduction, Gardner takes the time to offer brief descriptions of some of the more notable serious attempts to "force the whole of the SNARK into one overall metaphorical pattern." We'll never know exactly what was going through Carroll's mind when he created this epic journey--especially since the author himself claimed that the poem was devoid of any meaning--but the many efforts to explain it away are often ingenious and entertaining.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply delightful!, December 3, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hunting of the Snark : An Agony in Eight Fits (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

One of the most unusual poems ever written, "The Hunting of the Snark" is the uncontested masterpiece of nonsense verse. The verbal richness and flexibility of the English language are exploited to the utmost in this riotously funny, formally perfect, and delightfully absurd narrative poem about a strange assortment of characters out to hunt a fearsome creature known, among other things, for its habit of getting up so late that it breakfasts af five-o'clock tea and dines on the following day. No review can do justice to a work as original and extraordinary as this one, written more than a century ago to entertain Victorian children, but read now mostly by grownups. This is the very pinnacle of British humor, soaring far above even Monty Python's most inspired moments.