Reading: The Hunting of the Snark
Aug. 24th, 2019 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartI can't remember exactly how old I was when I first read Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark - probably ten or so - but I've loved it ever since for its delightful silliness. It's a verse epic in eight fits, telling the tale of an ill-fated voyage in quest of the Snark, a creature whose exact nature is specified, undertaken by a crew with a motley assortment of unlikely occupations. It is utterly nonsensical, but also rather touching in places (I particularly like the unlikely friendship between the Butcher and the Beaver), and frequently very, very funny.
I recently acquired a copy of the Tate edition with Tove Jansson's illustrations (originally commissioned in 1959 for a Swedish-language edition) and her drawings, which are very reminiscent of the pictures from the Moomin books, odd and sometimes a little creepy, complement the text beautifully.
I recently acquired a copy of the Tate edition with Tove Jansson's illustrations (originally commissioned in 1959 for a Swedish-language edition) and her drawings, which are very reminiscent of the pictures from the Moomin books, odd and sometimes a little creepy, complement the text beautifully.
