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 Betrothed (poem) The Betrothed (poem) "The Betrothed" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, first published in book form in "Departmental Ditties" (1886). It is a tongue-in-cheek work by the young bachelor Kipling, who affected a very worldly-wise stance. In it, he takes as his epigraph the report of evidence in a breach of promise case, ""You must choose between me and your cigar"". The poem simply has a narrator musing on the difference between his fiancée Maggie and his habit of smoking cigars: He weighs up Maggie's looks, and what she will be at fifty; the limitations of monogamy against "a harem