The Secret of the Snark

For the past 150 years, readers of The Hunting of the Snark have been all at sea, just like the poem’s bizarre crew on their absurd voyage. Some have simply enjoyed going along with Lewis Carroll’s nonsense, and others have divined depths of existential angst, but no-one realised quite what he was up to. Now Susanna Johnston’s well-referenced analysis provides a convincing answer.

Lewis Carroll enjoyed mystification for its own sake – he was an expert conjuror. But he was also a satirist, and obfuscation was both his protection and his method: mocking too plainly might offend, or invite opposition. Indirect suggestion was safer, and more effective. But, wanting to make his meaning plain to those who knew how to look, he provided enigmatic clues – aided and abetted by his illustrator, the artist Henry Holiday. 

This volume supplies Lewis Carroll’s complete poem together with its indispensable original illustrations and a fresh investigation of its significance. Today’s reader is at last equipped to discover the Secret of the Snark.