The Hunting of the Snark letters asking for the meaning of the poem, Carroll often replied that he did not know. However, in an 1896 reply to one letter, he agreed with one interpretation of the poem as an allegory for the search for happiness. Widely varying interpretations of "The Hunting of the Snark" have been suggested: an allegory for tuberculosis, a mockery of the Tichborne case, a satire of the controversies between religion and science, the repression of Carroll's sexuality, and a piece against vivisection, among others. According to Cohen, the poem represents a "voyage of life", with the Baker's disappearance caused by his
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