Snark (Lewis Carroll) Snark (Lewis Carroll) The snark is a fictional animal species created by Lewis Carroll in his nonsense poem "The Hunting of the Snark". His descriptions of the creatures were, in his own words, unimaginable, and he wanted that to remain so. According to Carroll, the initial inspiration to write the poem – which he called an "agony in eight fits" – was the final line, "For the snark was a boojum, you see". Carroll was asked repeatedly to explain the snark. In all cases, his answer was he did not know and could not explain. Later commentators have offered many
Lewis Carroll of the subconscious", as well as seeing it as a satire upon contemporary mathematical advances. The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego "Lewis Carroll" soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed "Alice in Wonderland" so much that she commanded that he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled "An Elementary Treatise on Determinants". Dodgson himself