The hunting of the Snark : an agony in eight fits

'Mervyn Peake has a magic in his pen. He can annihilate the dimensions.' (Charles Morgan, 1947) This is true of Peake's writing and his drawings, as these illustrations to Lewis Carroll's mock-heroic nonsense poem testify.

Richly brought to life with some of Peake's most exquisite line drawings THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK is a brilliant marriage of two of the most inventive imaginations. Carroll claimed that the inspiration for THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK (1876) sprang from 'one line of verse - one solitary line of verse - "For the Snark was a Boojum, you see"', that came to him one day in 1874 while he was out walking.

To questions asking whether the poem was an allegory, or a political satire, or contained some hidden moral, he claimed to have 'but one answer, "I don't know!"' (The Theatre, 1887). This edition, re-originated from original artwork, includes a selection of Peake's working sketches never before published.