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Three 150th Snark anniversaries

There are three important 150th anniversaries of “The Hunting of the Snark”. Pan Macmillan already missed two of them.

  • 25 October 2025: Naming ☑
    • On 25 October 1875, Carroll decided to use “The Hunting of the Snark” as the title of his Snark tragicomedy (which in Henry Holiday’s view started out as a tragedy).
  • 1 April 2026: Birth ☐
    • On 29 March 1876 at Macmillan, Carroll prepared 80 presentation copies for family and friends. (As far as I understand, these copies contained an additional poem: the Easter Greeting.)
    • On 1 April 1876, Macmillan officially published the poem with Henry Holiday’s illustrations.

There are more Snark related entries in Carroll’s notes.


 
Microblog: Bluesky

 
2024-06-05, update: 2025-10-27

Featured

The Queen and the Snark

My article “The Queen and the Snark” has been published in the magazine ILLUSTRATION (Volume 21, Issue 80, dated Summer 2024, but published in February 2025). From the editorial of the magazine: “[…] and we
have one essay which finds half-hidden allusions in Henry Holiday’s visual interpretation of Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. Is any of this real? It is up to you, the reader, to decide.”

I fully agree with that: Since the end of 2008 I think that Holiday’s illustrations are an important contribution to the interpretation of Carroll’s tragedy. They are as important as the text of the poem.

As of today, the Cellopress page for issue 80 still is empty.

Only after I wrote the article, I found a map in Henry Holiday’s front cover illustration.

For comments: Facebook | Bluesky | ipernity | Substack | reddit

Related links: Letters in the Waves? | When the Queen met the Boojum | Nose is a Nose is a Nose

 
2025-01-01, update: 2025-09-19

Featured

The Vanishing

Image based on an illustration by Henry Holiday and a page of the British Museum:

Almost four months before Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark was officially published on the 1st of April 1876, the illustrator Henry Holiday still thought of that ballad as a “tragedy“. In the end, the collaboration between the author and the illustrator yielded a tragicomedy. The sad end still is there, albeit very well hidden from child readers: The burning of Thomas Cranmer.

Nonsense literature like Carroll’s can be read repeatedly. Carroll’s nonsense is crossover literature. At different ages you would read the Snark tragicomedy differently. Likewise, you would look at Henry Holiday’s illustrations differently. Carroll wrote his Snark tragicomedy in a way which protects the young reader from understanding the sad end of the final “fit” The Vanishing too early.

 
2021-09-02, updated: 2022-02-28

Are there 9 or 10 Snark Hunters?

Most readers of The Hunting of the Snark assume that the Snark hunting party consists of ten members. However, probably for a good reason, only nine members can be seen in Henry Holiday’s illustrations (engraved by Joseph Swain) to Lewis Carroll’s ballad. Actually, I really think that the Snark hunting party consists of nine members only. But if you, as almost everybody else, prefer ten Snark hunters, that’s fine too. Lewis Carroll gave you (and me) a choice – incidentally(?) in the 9th and the 10th line of his tragicomedy.

Let us take all the crew members in order of their introduction:

  1. The Bellman, their captain.
  2. The Boots, a maker of Bonnets and Hoods.
    (A correct non-sequential interlaced portmanteau can be built from Bonnets and Hoods.)
    009 'The crew was complete: it included a boots - 010 A maker of Bonnets and Hoods. The usual interpretation is that this is the introduction of two crew members: The Boots and the maker of Bonnets and Hoods. Alternatively, the two lines also can be interpreted as the introduction of a Boots, who is a maker of Bonnets and Hoods.
  3. The Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes, but repeatedly complained about the Beaver’s evil lace-making.
  4. The Broker, to value their goods.
  5. The Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense, might perhaps have won more than his share. From John Tufail I learned that in Henry Holiday’s illustration the Billiard-marker is preparing a cheat.
  6. The Banker, engaged at enormous expense, had the whole of their cash in his care.
  7. The Beaver, that paced on the deck or would sit making lace in the bow and had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck, though none of the sailors knew how.
  8. The Baker, also addressed by “Fry me!”, “Fritter my wig!”, “Candle-ends” as well as “Toasted-cheese”, and known for joking with hyenas and walking paw-in-paw with a bear.
  9. The Butcher, who only could kill Beavers, but later became best friend with the lace-making animal.

More about the members of the Snark hunting party:
⭐ 9 or 10 hunters?
⭘  Care and Hope
⭘  The Snark
⭘  The Boojum

 
2017-11-06, updated: 2025-11-18

Taking 19840 as the subject to reason about

Taking Three as the subject to reason about —
　​A convenient number to state —
We add Seven, and Ten, and then multiply out
　​By One Thousand diminished by Eight.

The result we proceed to divide, as you see,
　​By Nine Hundred and Ninety Two:
Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be
　​Exactly and perfectly true.

Not all of Thomas Cranmer‘s 42 Articles made it into the Elizabethian 39 Articles of the Anglicans.

(3 10+7 10+10 10)×(1000 10-8 10) = 19840 10 = 231504 6 .
231504 10 can be devided by 42 10 as well as by 39 10 without remainder.
But did Lewis Carroll know that? 😉

 


(x+7+10)×(1000-8)/992-17 = x,
for x=3:

3 3
+ 7 10
+ 10 20
× (1000-8) 19840
/ 992 20
– 17 3

 

100110110000000 2 1111100000 2
1000012211 3 1100202 3
10312000 4 33200 4
1113330 5 12432 5
231504 6 4332 6
111562 7 2615 7
46600 8 1740 8
30184 9 1322 9
19840 10 992 10
139A7 11 822 11
B594 12 6A8 12
9052 13 5B4 13
7332 14 50C 14
5D2A 15 462 15
4D80 16 3E0 16
40B1 17 376 17
3744 18 312 18
2GI4 19 2E4 19
29C0 20 29C 20
22KG 21 255 21
1ILI 22 212 22
1EBE 23 1K3 23
1AAG 24 1H8 24
16IF 25 1EH 25
1392 26 1C4 26
105M 27 19K 27
P8G 28 17C 28
NH4 29 156 29
M1A 30 132 30
KK0 31 110 31
JC0 32 V0 32
I77 33 U2 33
H5I 34 T6 34
G6U 35 SC 35
FB4 36 RK 36

 
2024-02-14, update: 2025-11-17

Drugs

Lewis Carroll needed a clear mind for whatever he wrote. Drugs like laudanum would not have been helpful during writing.

The drug link is a homespun thing. You’ll find it on a host of random forums.

But the experts are usually sceptical. Carroll wasn’t thought to have been a recreational user of opium or laudanum, and the references may say more about the people making them than the author.

“The notion that the surreal aspects of the text are the consequence of drug-fuelled dreams resonates with a culture, particularly perhaps in the 60s, 70s and 80s when LSD was widely-circulated and even now where recreational drugs are commonplace,” says Dr Heather Worthington, Children’s Literature lecturer at Cardiff University.

Source: Is Alice in Wonderland really about drugs?
(by Sophie Robehmed, BBC magazine 2012-08-20)

 

Let me be perfectly clear here: Lewis Carroll didn’t do recreational drugs. Certainly there were drug references in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and these were picked up on by people with interests in that area, particularly in the late sixties. That is not to say that Carroll never took Laudanum for a medical problem on the advice of a doctor. There is NO direct proof (in his letters or his diaries) that he ever took narcotic drugs. You might ask yourself why students insist that he did and why some teachers teach that he did.

Source: lewiscarroll.org (2002)

 

“This is how I feel whenever someone assumes Lewis Carroll was on drugs.
People don’t believe that some people just have fucking amazing imaginations and are extremely creative.”

Source (for logged-in Bluesky users): raccoon-overlord.bsky.social (2025-11-16)

 

2019-12-12, update: 2025-11-16

“Snark” is older than Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll did not coin the term snark. The term snark is older than Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll).

(See Bluesky and Reddit)

This is an update to the post Snarking.

2025-11-03, updated: 2025-11-15

Fact Checks

  • Ambiguous: The “Boots” and “the maker of Bonnets and Hoods” in The Hunting of the Snark might be two different persons, but also could be the same person. Thus, the Snark hunting crew might have only nine members, not ten.
  • Unproven: The assumption that Carroll was on drugs when he wrote the Alice books.
  • Probably wrong: The assumption that the the Snark’s “fondness for bathing-machines” is nonsense. It might be an Oxford Christ Church College insider joke.
  • Too often wrong: Carroll quotes (e.g. in the Internet). Check them before a Carroll misquote sticks as a tattoo on your skin.
  • Wrong: The assumption that C.L. Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) invented the word “Snark”.
  • Wrong: The assumption that the “Ocean Chart” (the Bellman’s map) in The Hunting of the Snark was made by Henry Holiday.
  • Wrong: The claim by rare book sellers that only the first issue of The Hunting of the Snark has “Baker” on page 83.
  • Wrong: The assumption that there is photographic evidence that Alice Liddell, as a child, kissed C.L. Dodgson.
  • Wrong: The story that C.L. Dodgson sent an admiring Queen Victoria a copy of An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.

 

Not Lewis Carroll

 
2019-07-12, updated: 2025-11-13

The Mathematical World of C.L. Dodgson

The Mathematical World of C.L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) https://t.co/nmGpkaXScD vía @YouTube

— Profesor Raul Alva G (@Prof_Raul_Alva) October 21, 2019

On voting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2038&v=wYjnUDV3pTM

2019-10-22: Below you find text (2018-05-13) moved from https://snrk.de/page_the-new-belfry#voting to this blog article.

Carroll/Dodgson tried to fight against apodictic assertiveness and oversimplification not only by means of nonsense poetry but also by means of mathematics. He expected decisions to have a solid base – like fair voting:

One small part of Dodgson’s work, though, has impressed social scientists: his analysis of the mathematics of voting. His interest in the topic was sparked by the deliberations of his colleagues at Christ Church over such matters as how to choose a new belfry. Dodgson’s pamphlets on voting were largely ignored until 1958, when a British economist, Duncan Black, noticed that there had been nothing so good on the topic since just after the French Revolution.

https://www.economist.com/node/11662202, 2009
 

Ostensibly, [Dodgson] was pondering the best way for the governing body of Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a tutor in mathematics, to decide on the design for a controversial belfry, and to pick new members of the college. […] For college elections, Dodgson first proposed a version of Borda’s method, and also a version of Condorcet’s (though he appears not to have known about Borda’s and Condorcet’s work). Later, he developed an interest in politics beyond the walls of Christ Church, and, in the eighteen-eighties, he tried to find ways to secure equitable representation in Parliament for minorities.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/07/26/win-or-lose, 2010

 
Dodgson’s method of taking votes on more than two issues (1876) attempts to find winners in case initially there is no winner. The method was applied at Christ Church college for a small number of candidates. However, for large lists of choices, the rearranging of candidates (until a winner is found) requires a computing power which surely was not available then. And in 2006 it still was a challenge (see McCabe-Dansted below).

2019-10-22, updated: 2025-11-11

Snarks Have Five Unmistakable Marks

How can we recognize a Snark? The Bellman explains it (🎶🎶🎶): A Snark is not necessarily evil, but once it turns into a Boojum, you are in trouble.

    “Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again
        The five unmistakable marks
    By which you may know, wheresoever you go,
        The warranted genuine Snarks.

    “Let us take them in order.

  1.     The first is the taste,
            Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp:
        Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,
            With a flavour of Will-o’-the-wisp.

  2.     “Its habit of getting up late you’ll agree
            That it carries too far, when I say
        That it frequently breakfasts at five-o’clock tea,
            And dines on the following day.

  3.     “The third is its slowness in taking a jest.
            Should you happen to venture on one,
        It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:
            And it always looks grave at a pun.

  4.     “The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines,
            Which it constantly carries about,
        And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes –
            A sentiment open to doubt.

  5.     “The fifth is ambition.

      6.  


          It next will be right
              To describe each particular batch:
          Distinguishing
                    ※ those that have feathers, and bite,
                    ※ And those that have whiskers, and scratch.

          “For, although common Snarks do no manner of harm,
              Yet, I feel it my duty to say,
          Some are Boojums –” The Bellman broke of in alarm,
              For the Baker had fainted away.
       
      …
       
          “He remarked to me then,” said that mildest of men,
              “ ‘If your Snark be a Snark, that is right:
          Fetch it home by all means – you may serve it with greens,
              And it’s handy for striking a light.

          “ ‘You may seek it with thimbles—and seek it with care;
              You may hunt it with forks and hope;
          You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
              You may charm it with smiles and soap –’ ”

          (“That’s exactly the method,” the Bellman bold
              In a hasty parenthesis cried,
          “That’s exactly the way I have always been told
              That the capture of Snarks should be tried!”)

          “ ‘But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
              If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
          You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
              And never be met with again!’
       
      …
       
          “I engage with the Snark — every night after dark —
              In a dreamy delirious fight:
          I serve it with greens in those shadowy scenes,
              And I use it for striking a light:

          “But if ever I meet with a Boojum, that day,
              In a moment (of this I am sure),
          I shall softly and suddenly vanish away —
              And the notion I cannot endure!”

       
      Important: The descriptions above are opinions of the Bellman, the Baker and the Baker’s Uncle. The views of these characters are not necessarily Lewis Carroll’s views: “I do not hold myself responsible for any of the opinions expressed by the characters in my book.” (Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded). However, the “delirious fight” “every night after dark” could be a reference to the author’s own “mental troubles“.

       
      Among the forks mentioned above (used to hunt the Snark and carried by this landing crew of a naval expedition) is a tuning fork (held by the Banker).
              On his naval expedition with the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin used a tuning-fork to let spiders dance, and for dissection (don’t tell the spiders) he used lace-needles together with his microscope (like the one carried by the beaver).

       
      2017-09-18, edited 2025-10-30

Thinking it Through

Among the issues the The Hunting of the Snark is about, one of them perhaps might be reasoning. There are several remedies against bad reasoning. One of them is clear thinking. That is what Kwame Anthony Appiah‘s Thinking It Through – An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy (2003) is about. The book also is available as PDF file (archive).

 
See also: http://appiah.net/ (archive).


Recently my browser gave me a warning when I checked whether the PDF file still is online. But the file the is ok and didn’t change since I downloaded it a few years ago.

 
2017-12-01, update: 2025-10-28

The Jabberwock

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky#Reception:

[…] [Jabberwocky] has also been interpreted as a parody of contemporary Oxford scholarship and specifically the story of how Benjamin Jowett, the notoriously agnostic Professor of Greek at Oxford, and Master of Balliol, came to sign the Thirty-Nine Articles, as an Anglican statement of faith, to save his job. […]

Stephen Prickett (2005): Victorian Fantasy, Baylor University Press, p. 113, ISBN 1-932792-30-9

Unlike Benjamin Jowett, the Rev. Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) didn’t sign, but managed to save his job nevertheless without being ordained as a priest. (I am not so sure about the Jowett link, because «the first stanza of “Jabberwocky” was originally written by Carroll at the age of 13 under the title “Stanza of Anglo-Saxon poetry”.» [Darien Graham-Smith, p. 36])

 

Jabberwocky

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

 
See also:
※ https://poemanalysis.com/lewis-carroll/jabberwocky
※ Vogon poetry
※ Chamutal Noimann, Empowering Nonsense: Reading Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” in a Basic Writing Class (2014)
※ Etching of Saint George and the Dragon by Paolo Uccello (c. 1470). But there also are other inspiring sources:

Christian’s fight with Appollyon in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,
London: Carington Bowles, 1781.
(Source: John Bunyan Society)

 

Games (unfortunately not available anymore from the app shop):
Jabberwocky, Confounded, app for iOS by Christopher Gross

 

Music:
composer: Zoë Tweed, rendition: Sylva Winds
(flute: Yi-Hsuan Chen, bassoon: Guylaine Eckersley, oboe & voice: Drake Gritton,
clarinet: Rowan Jones, french horn: Zoë Tweed)

 
composer: Ben Ponniah, rendition: Peter Noden

 

Muppets

 

2018-04-06, update: 2025-10-27

One Hour of Snark (BBC 1992)

HUNTING OF THE SNARK
Lewis Carroll
Topics BBC Radio, Dramatised reading, Lewis Carroll, The Snark, nonsense verse

Michael Bakewell examines the various interpretations of Lewis Carroll’s nonsense verse published in 1876, about “an impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature” and introduces a dramatised reading.

Music: Steven Faux
Narrator: Alan Bennett
Bellman: Paul Daneman
Baker: David Collings
Butcher: David King
Snark: Peter Penry Jones

BBC Radio 3, 20 December 1992

 
2019-01-01, updated: 2025-10-27

Alice on the Train

Bycatch (but not mine):

[left]: John Tenniel: Alice on the Train (1872)
[right]: Augustus Leopold Egg: The Travelling Companions (1862)

I found the comparison in preraphaelitesisterhood.com. If it is a pictorial reference at all, it might be a nice pun by Tenniel, but not as challenging as Henry Holiday’s conundrums.

Playing with the work of other artists could have been fun for John Tenniel too. (Of course another reason for such similarities always could be, that Holiday and Egg both referred an image by a third artist.)

 
2017-09-22, updated: 2025-08-17

I met the Snark in 2005

Before my Snark hunt started in December 2008, I mainly focused on Henry Holiday’s illustration to the 5th fit in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. Since 2005 (then as a member of a works council, where I specialized on mental workload issues in OHS), I used that illustration as a depiction of improvable workplace design. I also inserted the illustration into a German Wikipedia article in 2008. Probably from there it was copied into another Wikipedia article in 2012. That one again might have inspired a Forbes article about well-being in the workplace in 2013.

In 2008 I read Carroll and Holiday’s complete tragicomedy. Then I made an incidental discovery.

 
2019-04-13, update: 2025-05-20

Breakfast at five-o’clock tea

There is a time difference between the UK and Tahiti.

Snark mark 2/5:

Its habit of getting up late you’ll agree
　That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o’clock tea,
　And dines on the following day.

In November 1859, Dodgson gave a lecture at a meeting of the Ashmolean Society on “Where does the Day begin?”. A stopped clock is right 24 times a day, if you start carrying the clock around the globe due West at an angular speed of 15°/h once it has stopped. (It’s almost like the mad tea-party having always six o’clock while moving around the table.) Only the day date suddenly would change somewhere. (That’s where in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland the March Hare quickly changes the topic.)

There neither were internationally defined time zones yet, nor an internationally agreed date line when Charles Darwin and the HMS Beagle travelled around the world, but when he (and the Snark) breakfasted in Tahiti, it probably already was around tea time back home in Carroll’s Oxford. From England it carries us far away, when we imagine breakfasting in Tahiti.

On 2020-10-22 I found a twitter thread, where John Pretorius showed, that he interpreted (and applied) Lewis Carroll’s “breakfasts at five-o’clock tea” stanza in the same way as I did.

 
2019-08-16, update: 2025-05-13

The Joy of Hiding Things in Art

In a BBC video, video journalist Adam Paylor gives us a good example for why things might be hidden in art: Besides assuming that people who see cryptomorphs in artwork might just be suffering from pareidolia, often one important reason for hiding things in art is neglected by art researchers: Hiding things in images can be fun!

Also from http://severnbeachantiques.com/famous-rare-1980-huntley-and-palmer-rude-garden-party-ginger-nuts-tin you can learn about a good reason for an artist to hide things in art:

I did them out of devilment, purely for a laugh. I’ve always been a bit of a naughty boy but I’ve nothing against Huntley & Palmers. There have been rumours that I got made redundant and did it out of revenge. But that’s not true – I was only ever a freelance. I just felt like adding a bit of smut to the proceedings.

That is what Mick Hill, the creator of the illustration of the Huntley & Palmers garden party ginger nuts tin, said about the hidden surprises in his artwork.

 
2018-07-01, updated: 2025-04-06

Mike Batt’s Snark

※ 1987: The Hunting Of The Snark – Royal Albert Hall (1h)

«In 1987 Mike Batt recorded this concert of the early stage album of his “Snark” project. This is not a film of the eventual 1991 West End show, which was much more fully produced and had many more songs and more story. This early concert starred John Hurt, Roger Daltrey, Justin Hayward, Deniece Williams, Captain Sensible, Julian Lennon, Midge Ure, and Billy Connolly, with Batt conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Music/lyrics/orchestrations by Mike Batt. Based on the poem (as recited in the narration) written by Lewis Carroll.»

UPDATE (2026-03-11): https://bsky.app/profile/snark150.bsky.social/post/3lk426ovzf22l is about an enhanced version of the video showing Mike Batt’s 1987 Snark musical.

 
※ 2010: The Hunting Of The Snark – Live at Cadogan Hall (9m40s)

 
※ Mike Batt’s Snark project

 

※ 2020-07-22, Interview: John Murray Lunchtime Show with Mike Batt. The whole show on k107FM is worth listening to, but if you are very impatient and want to learn more about Mike Batt’s Snark musical right away, start at 01:18:45 in the podcast: https://www.mixcloud.com/john-murray7/22-july-2020-john-murray-lunchtime-show-with-mike-batt/

If anyone's bored, my office have just posted my "Director Showreel". It's about 5 years old but someone found it! Anyway who knows, you might want me to direct your music spectacular feature! https://t.co/Y8EHIDeXMm

— Mike Batt (@Mike_Batt) September 2, 2020

※ Mike Batt – Director Showreel (YouTube, 2020)

 

※ Mike Batt – A Songwriters Tale (YouTube, 2012)

 

Wikipedia | Mike Batt page (in German) | more Snark music

2018-10-15, update: 2025-03-18

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