Lewis Carroll gives "1872" as the date of publication.) Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects changes in Dodgson's life. His father's death in 1868 plunged him into a depression that lasted some years. In 1876, Dodgson produced his next great work, "The Hunting of the Snark", a fantastical "nonsense" poem exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of nine tradesmen and one beaver, who set off to find the snark. It received largely mixed reviews from Carroll's contemporary reviewers, but was enormously popular with the public, having been reprinted seventeen times between 1876 and 1908, and has seen various adaptations into musicals,
Lewis Carroll: A Biography handling of the material to Carroll's boat trips with the children, saying, "With Cohen at the tiller, we are deftly guided through the flow of Carroll's life." Ronald Warwick in "Times Higher Education" criticises Cohen's interpretation of Carroll's relationship with his archdeacon father; his "insecure grasp of 19th-century ecclesiastical history"; his prose, which Warwick called cliched; and his choice to use Dodgson's first name, which Warwick said was not used even by Dodgson's most intimate male friends. Lewis Carroll: A Biography Lewis Carroll: A Biography is a 1995 biography of author Lewis Carroll by Morton N. Cohen, first published by