Portal:Literature/Selected picture archive/September 2011

Plate I of Henry Holiday's original illustrations for the first edition of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, a nonsense poem written in 1874 that tells the story of ten individuals who cross the ocean to hunt the Snark. In common with other Carroll works, the meaning of the poem has been queried and analysed in depth. It is divided into eight "fits" (a pun on the archaic fitt meaning a part of a song, and fit meaning a convulsion) and is by far Carroll's longest poem. (image details)

Image credit: Henry Holiday