The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits

By Lewis Carroll

An Allegory For the Search of Happiness
“They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; / They pursued it with forks and hope; / They threatened its life with a railway-share; / They charmed it with smiles and soap.” - Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits

Ten members depart on a journey to hunt the Snark, a fictional animal nobody can describe. The leader Bellman has a map, a blank paper that points to a strange land where the Snark can be found. They split up in their attempt to hunt the animal. But will they find it?

,This book has been professionally formatted for e-readers and contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xist Publishing
• Release date: Feb 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781681956176

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, in 1871. Considered a master of the genre of literary nonsense, he is renowned for his ingenious wordplay and sense of logic, and his highly original vision.

Book preview

The Hunting of the Snark

An Agony in Eight Fits

by

Lewis Carroll

Xist Publishing

TUSTIN, CA

ISBN: 9978-1-68195-617-6

This edition published in 2016 by Xist Publishing

PO Box 61593

Irvine, CA 92602

www.xistpublishing.com

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the address above.

The Hunting of the Snark/ Lewis Carroll

ISBN 978-1-68195-617-6

Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes.

Sign up for the Xist Publishing Newsletter here.

Find more great titles on our website www.XistPublishing.com

Book Club Discussion Guide

Book Club Discussion Questions

PREFACE

If—and the thing is wildly possible—the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p.4)

          Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes.

In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such a deed: I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of this poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so cautiously inculcated in it, or to its noble teachings in Natural History—I will take the more prosaic course of simply explaining how it happened.

The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to. They knew it was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman about it—he would only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in pathetic tones Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been able to understand—so it generally ended in its being fastened on, anyhow, across the rudder. The helmsman used to stand by with tears in his eyes; he knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm, had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one. So remonstrance was impossible, and no steering could be done till the next varnishing day. During these bewildering intervals the ship usually sailed backwards.

As this poem is to some extent connected with the lay of the Jabberwock, let me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been asked me, how to pronounce slithy toves. The i in slithy is long, as in writhe; and toves is pronounced so as to rhyme with groves. Again, the first o in borogoves is pronounced like the o in borrow. I have heard people try to give it the sound of the o in worry. Such is Human Perversity.