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,
The Hunting of the Snark refused his illustration of the Boojum, preferring that the creature go without a depiction, and made him change his initial portrayal of the Broker, as it could be perceived as anti-semitic. When finally published, the poem comprised 141 stanzas of four lines each, with internal rhymes in the first and third lines of irregular stanzas appearing in the poem from the second fit onwards. In his poem, Lewis Carroll might have alluded to a limerick by Edward Lear. Instead of faces turning red or white, both authors let waistcoats display the bodily reactions of their owners to stress. To illustrate