The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits was published by Macmillan and Co. in 1876, with illustrations by Henry Holiday. It is Carroll’s longest and most sustained work of pure nonsense poetry — 141 stanzas describing an expedition to hunt a creature called a Snark, which may or may not be a Boojum (a Snark’s most dangerous variety, fatal to hunters).
The crew consists of ten members, all designated by occupations beginning with B: the Bellman (captain), the Boots, the Bonnet-maker, the Barrister, the Broker, the Billiard-marker, the Banker, the Beaver, the Baker, and the Butcher. They sail with a blank map (“a perfect and absolute blank”), navigate by methods that contradict each other, and hunt a creature defined entirely by what it is not.
Carroll himself refused to explain the poem’s meaning: “I’m very much afraid I didn’t mean anything but nonsense! Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them.” This refusal has not prevented generations of interpreters from finding in it allegories of the search for the Absolute, the quest for business success, the inevitability of death, the futility of metaphysics, and the voyage of life itself.
The final line — “For the Snark was a Boojum, you see” — is one of the most famous in English nonsense literature: simultaneously a revelation and a refusal of revelation, explaining everything and nothing.
Collecting The Hunting of the Snark
First edition (Macmillan, London, 1876): Cloth binding with pictorial cover, illustrated by Henry Holiday.
Market values:
- First edition, first issue: $1,000–$4,000
- Good condition: $500–$1,500
- Inscribed/signed: $5,000–$15,000
- Later editions: $100–$400