an agony, in eight fits (13. 306)

With the above subtitle, as our faithful chronicler reminds, English writer Lewis Carroll (previously) published his nonsense poem on this day in 1876, borrowing stylistically from an earlier verse “Jabberwocky” and Through the Looking-Glass, whose first printing run included a religious tract, “An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves ‘Alice.’” Variously interpreted as a lampoon against Victorian sensibilities, an allegory of tuberculosis, existential angst over the fear of losing one’s sense of self and a court case that was a cause célèbre during its composition involving a man who claimed to be the missing heir to the Tichborne estate supposed lost in a shipwreck en route to Australia, and relates the narrative of a hunting party’s arrival in a strange land, the crew consisting of a bellman, bonnet-maker, a barrister, broker, billiard-maker, banker, a beaver, a baker and a butcher to pursue their quarry of the Snark, which is rumoured to be a highly dangerous boojum, which makes all take pause.  Whilst the sense of derision or irreverence is onomatopoeic from the interjection to snort, the poem lends the sense of a wild-goose chase.  The hunt commences:

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.

Along the way, the B-Team encounter a jubjub bird and are attacked by bandersnatch, causing the bank to lose his sanity and disappear without a trace, claiming to have spied their objective but none of the others catch sight of the elusive prey. With illustrated plates by stained-glass designer, muralist and architect Henry Holiday (see above), whose studies of ancient Egyptian motifs helped fuel the Mummy Mania craze, “The Hunting of the Snark” received mixed contemporary reviews and critics pronounced Carroll’s prose and poetry past its prime, although upon reevaluation the enduring references, vocabulary and cadence, structured like a limerick, it has been embraced an reinterpreted in many formats and a dedicated academic journal.