Name: Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark
Author: Lewis Carroll

Inscribed by the author: ‘William M. Wilcox, from his affte. Cousin & Godfather, the author, Mar. 29. 1876’. Published under the alias of Charles Lutwidge Dodson, only about 100 of the deluxe publisher's binding edition were produced.

Among the book’s illustrations is the famous Bellman’s map, introduced in the poem as ‘a perfect and absolute blank’. Rejected by the crew for lacking the ‘conventional signs’ of geography – no poles, equators, or capes – it is celebrated precisely for its emptiness, ‘a map they could all understand.’ The map has been read as a satire on cartographic conventions and, more profoundly, as a commentary on the relation between language and meaning. By offering a representation devoid of content, Carroll anticipates later philosophical debates about ‘sense’ and reference, echoing themes that would occupy Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein. Although the book credits Henry Holiday with nine illustrations, there are in fact ten if the map is included; stylistic evidence suggests that the map was not by Holiday but may have been created by a typesetter at Carroll’s request.

Ex Carta

 contains the famous ‘Bellman’s Map’. Purporting to be an ocean chart, it is in fact ‘a perfect and absolute blank’, a conceit that gently mocks cartographic authority while anticipating later discourse on representation and meaning.

Carroll’s celebrated nonsense epic, recounting the impossible voyage of an improbable crew in pursuit of the elusive Snark. Described by critics as ‘the Odyssey of the nonsensical’ and a ‘masterpiece of nonsense’ (Williams et al.), the poem is at once comic fantasy, parody of epic form, and a playful meditation on logic and meaning.

Issued in 1876, the standard first edition was produced in a standard buff-cloth binding blocked in black. However, Carroll also ordered smaller runs of different colours stamped in gilt, including “100 in red and gold” of which this is an example. Inscribed examples in these deluxe bindings, such as this, are of particular rarity. Carroll had first conceived the verses as part of a children’s tale, but the poem expanded into a book in its own right. It quickly became one of his most popular works, inspiring musical settings, parodies, continuations, and philosophical interpretations.

 (1871), Carroll was also a poet of considerable range. He admired the verse of Tennyson and Rossetti, and wrote both comic and serious poems (Cohen, 1995). 

 stands apart within his oeuvre as a sustained nonsense epic, notable for its linguistic inventiveness and logical undercurrents, and it has continued to attract commentary across literature, philosophy, and cultural studies.