The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony, in Eight Fits

Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898Project Gutenberg · United StatesMar 2023

Rating 4.3
Word count
34K words
Chapters
4

Tags

Motivation and Growth Suspense ThrillerVoyage AllegoryFate and FortuneHumor ReliefSymbolic MazeAbsurd NarrativeSatirical StyleNonsense VerseVictorian EraMusical Rhythm

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony, in Eight Fits by Lewis CarrollAuthor: Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Sep 1, 2009

Editor's review

The Hunting of the Snark is a long narrative poem Lewis Carroll wrote after the Alice books, and its subtitle, "An Agony, in Eight Fits," already signals its absurd, playful tone. The poem follows a crew of oddly named characters—the Baker, the Banker, the Bellman, the Butcher, and others—who set sail to hunt the Snark, each carrying absurd equipment and encountering sights that defy common sense. Carroll flaunts his gift for wordplay here: invented words, puns, and logical paradoxes interweave, so that under the nursery-rhyme rhythm lies a mockery of certainty of meaning. As a narrative poem it is short but layered: children can read it as adventure and humor, adults as Victorian social satire and linguistic play. The Project Gutenberg edition preserves the English original, making it a light reader for poetry beginners and language-sense training, and a treat for literature lovers who savor its puns and nonsense verse. Read it slowly, attending to rhyme and the sound games behind the invented words, rather than insisting on plot logic.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read it through once for rhythm and pace, without worrying about the meaning of invented words.
  2. On a second pass, consult notes or a translation to map the eight fits and the characters.
  3. Read aloud to appreciate Carroll's sound design in rhyme and puns.
  4. After reading, try writing an extra fit or a parody to experience his rules of wordplay.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4

FAQ

What is the connection between this book and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? Both were written by Lewis Carroll and share a taste for absurd logic and wordplay, but The Hunting of the Snark is an independent narrative poem with no direct link in characters or plot to Alice; it can be seen as a stylistic continuation by the same author.
How difficult is the English, and what level is needed to read it? The original is Victorian English poetry; the vocabulary is not very hard, but there are many invented words and puns. Reading ability around college English level 4 is enough to attempt it, and notes or a translation will make it smoother.
What exactly does "Snark" mean, and does the book give an answer? Carroll deliberately leaves it undefined; the Snark may be prey, an illusion, or a purely linguistic sign. This uncertainty is the core pleasure of the work, and readers need not insist on a single explanation.
What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition? It is a free public-domain ebook offering the English original, easy to search and copy on a computer or e-reader. It is suitable as a study text but has no Chinese translation or detailed notes.

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About the author

Carroll, Lewis, 1832-1898 Author

Lewis Carroll (Carroll, Lewis, 1832–1898) is an English writer known for children's literature and nonsense narrative. The collection holds 26 of his works, with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as representative titles, alongside derived texts such as The Nursery Alice and translations into Finnish, French, Esperanto, and other languages, showing their wide circulation. His writing is distinguished by logical games, verbal puns, and bizarre imagination; through dreams and transformations it disrupts everyday order, and beneath the seemingly light fairy tale lie reflections on rules, growing up, and identity. These works are often classed as inspirational coming-of-age literature, yet are better regarded as classic fantasy that transcends age. Public information on the details of his life is limited, so this note focuses on the themes, style, and lasting influence of his works.