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
Boeing Duveen and The Beautiful Soup songs' lyrics were adapted from poems from "Through the Looking-Glass" by Lewis Carroll, and Carroll was credited as co-writer with Hutt. Hutt would later reflect "I'd learnt the guitar in the Fifties, but I couldn't write words". Hutt played sitar on "Which Dreamed It". Initial copies of the single featured a picture sleeve reproducing John Tenniel's original illustration of the Jabberwock. The band's name also comes from a poem by Lewis Carroll, "Beautiful Soup", from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". Both sides of the single were included in the Rubble series - "Jabberwock" in the 14th volume and "Which Dreamed It"