The Hunting of the Snark of prose and its too appealing title. "The Athenaeum" described it as "the most bewildering of modern poetry," wondering "if he has merely been inspired to reduce to idiotcy as many readers and more especially reviewers, as possible." According to "Vanity Fair", Carroll's work had progressively worsened after "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865), with "The Hunting of the Snark" being the worst of his works and "not worthy [of] the name of nonsense". While "The Spectator" wrote that the poem's final line had the potential to become a proverb, it criticised the poem as "a failure" that might have succeeded
Lewis Carroll possible alternative titles were rejected – "Alice Among the Fairies" and "Alice's Golden Hour" – the work was finally published as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier. The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist. Annotated versions provide insights into many of the ideas and hidden meanings that are prevalent in these books. Critical literature has often proposed Freudian interpretations of the book as "a descent into the dark world