Engaging the Snark: A Textual Commentary on The Hunting of the Snark

This textual commentary looks at how The Hunting of the Snark is structured, and comments on the poetic elements. It also discusses the history of the poem and of Henry Holiday’s illustrations for it. A fascinating look at a poem which has been universally acknowledged as the greatest of all epic nonsense poems. Selwyn Goodacre has a large Lewis Carroll collection includ­ing over 2000 copies of the Alice books. He is a past chair­man of the Lewis Carroll Society, and edited the Society journal from 1974-1997. For years he has pursued a special interest in the text of the Alice books, which has led to his current com­mentary on, and analysis of, the way they were written.