Beyond Alice
Perhaps the best known of these works is The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in Eight Fits). Several editions of this nonsense poem exist in the Cassady Collection, and are discussed at greater length below. Sharing its imagined world with the “Jabberwocky” poem found in Through the Looking Glass, the story (nonsensical in plot and language) follows a boat crew on the hunt for a “snark”.
Before the notoriety of the Alice books, Carroll was writing short stories and poems. Carroll wrote and illustrated a periodical called Mischmasch primarily for the entertainment of his family. (Remember, Dodgson was a full time Oxford don at the time). Included in Mischmasch is the earliest known version of the “Jabberwocky” poem that was later immortalized in Through the Looking-Glass. He created The Rectory Magazine and Rectory Umbrella, which also consisted of mixed short works that reveal Carroll’s wit. A number of these works were collected and published posthumously in 1932’s The Rectory Umbrella and Mischmasch.
These works coincided with his publishing of a series of humorous short tales - or “Knots” as Carroll referred to them - published in The Monthly Packet between 1880 and 1885. Carroll would later collate these works to form A Tangled Tale, a collection of the ten stories. The title of this work seems to reflect how Carroll viewed it - a tangled collection of stories that attempted to combine mathematics and humour - an experiment he himself believed was “but a lame attempt” at storytelling.
His critics, though, were more accepting of the work, recognizing Carroll’s clever attempts at interweaving abstract conceptual puzzles with comedic relief. It was Carroll’s 1890 work Sylvie and Bruno that received a far chillier response. Like A Tangled Tale, Sylvie and Bruno attempted to merge two styles of writing - the nonsensical, fantastical tales of Carroll with the more serious and logical writings of Dodgson.
While Carroll’s goal was laudable, the result was a work that read in a disjointed and meandering manner. It attempted to combine two disparate modes of literature, and in the eyes of many of his critics, failed. The moralistic analyses of Victorian society were lost on his younger readers, while Bruno’s baby-talk and adventures in Elfland were off-putting to adults. However, the work can be viewed as essential to pushing the boundaries of literary convention.
While Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are by far Carroll’s best known works, the literature beyond Alice gives us greater insight into the author’s mind. Dodgson was a man of many interests, and his final years writing under his Carroll alias demonstrate a desire to combine those many interests in a new form of literary expression - one that embraced not just fictional storytelling, but all manner of academic disciplines.This limited edition copy of Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark is by Russian artist Iouri Shtapakov. The artist produced only two unique versions of this text in 2000, one belonging to the Cassady Collection. The illustrations in this edition were hand painted with watercolor and the text was handwritten by the artist. More specifically, according to the item’s description, “The illustrations are engraved in drypoint on plastic and handcoloured with watercolour. The handwritten text is in black ink.” The book is enclosed in a suede and leather case.
Shtapakov has worked in a number of media but is best known in Russia for his engravings and illustrations of the works of J.R.R Tolkein, Boris Vian, George Orwell, Jack Kerouac, Edward Lear and Daniil Charms. As evidenced by this list, he has a proclivity for fantastic and nonsense literature, making Snark a suitable choice. According to a biography of the contemporary artist, “He not only considers the technical aspects of his paintings, but also the optical, philosophical and ethical aspects” (http://www.artnet.com/artists/yury-shtapakov/biography).
We certainly see this side of the artist in his reworking of Carroll’s Snark. The piece is truly individual, and a work of art in and of itself. In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter Benjamin speaks to the aura of artwork being lost as it is mass produced. This book by Shtapakov has maintained that “aura” by being a direct recipient of the artist’s hand. This edition is signed. Following Benjamin’s general ideas, a signature would usually be the intimate exception on an otherwise mass produced work. In this case, the signature is further evidence of Shtapakov’s presence.
One of 100 special editions published at the behest of Carroll, this version of the Hunting of the Snark was to be gifted to various friends and distant family members - many of them children. As a result, it is uniquely well-crafted. The front piece is a radiant red color, its illustrations etched in what appear to be gold leaf. Imprinted on the front is an image of a man with a curiously oversized head ringing a bell at the top of a mast, a field of stars interspersed with wispy clouds behind him - an illustration by the historical genre painter Henry Holiday.
Moving onward there’s a series of pages with information about the book, as well as an inscription: “To a dear Child : in memory of golden summer hours and whispers of a summer sea.” Interspersed between these pages are multiple blank ones nearly unblemished despite the age of the book.
While scrolling through the pages, one might be struck by the size of the text, and the spacing. Each line is given plenty of room, and when there needs to be a break between Stanzas, the spacing is even wider. The only exception to this rule is the preface, which is single spaced and fills the page.
Finally, the illustrations within the book itself are crazy, with many of them giving grotesque interpretations of the characters within - oversized heads, exaggerated facial expressions, etc. In one particular image on page 102, Holiday renders a beautiful illustration of what one can only assume to be the Snark. It peers out of the darkness of a chasm, its features formed by the varying shadows and curling branches of the trees at the top of the deep gorge. The effect is chilling, melding natural features with those of some eldritch, otherworldly entity.
What truly makes this piece unique, though, is how it was personalized for its recipient. In the inner cover, we find a letter from Selwyn Blackett (in nearly illegible cursive), the brother of the original owner, Mabel, that recounts how the book was given to her by Carroll. Moving forward to page 5, we see a handwritten dedication to Mabel scrawled on the page above the title. If one turns the page again, they find a note in Carroll’s handwriting - a poem personally written for Mabel, referencing Alice. Each line begins with a letter from Mabel’s name - implying that Carroll spent a not-inconsequential period of time writing the message for Mabel.