The Hunting of the Snark follows a crew of ten trying to hunt the Snark, an animal which may turn out to be a highly dangerous Boojum. The only one of the crew to find the Snark quickly vanishes, leading the narrator to explain that it was a Boojum after all. The poem is dedicated to young Gertrude Chataway, whom Carroll met at the English seaside town Sandown in the Isle of Wight in 1875. Included with many copies of the first edition of the poem was Carroll's religious tract, "An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves "Alice"". "The Hunting of the Snark" was
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