The Hunting of the Snark
1876
- bibliography
- history and criticism
- children's poetry, english
- poetry
- collections
- english poetry
- nonsense verses
- illustrations
- translations into french
- juvenile literature
The story
A nonsense poem recounting the adventures of the Bellman and his crew and their challenges hunting a Snark.
What it’s like
Bouncing, breezy verse with a sing-song rhythm that rolls along like a rowing song, the kind you hear half-remembered and mouth without meaning to. The voice is wry and conspiratorial, delivered in short, rhyme-tight stanzas that snap shut on a punchline, so the reading pace stays quick and playful. Imagine a mapmaker's ledger of absurd nouns, Boots, Bakers, Beavers, a Banker with a pun in his pocket, all set against a pale sea of blank chart-paper whiteness. The mood is gently daft and quietly eerie at the edges: a crew heading into vague fog for something nobody can describe, with a slow undertow of mild dread that never curdles. Violence is absent; the worst that happens is a ludicrous vanishing and a thin, offhand shiver. It suits a lazy afternoon, a bedtime read aloud, or a long train ride when the mind wants something light and strange. Best for readers who love nonsense, wordplay and the pleasure of rhyme for its own sake, and for anyone who enjoys a story that is mostly the sound of its own cleverness.
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