The Hunting of the Snark

“The Hunting of the Snark” relates in glittering verse the story of how the Bellman and his eccentric crew, who include a butcher, a baker, a beaver and a tailor, set off in quest of that most mysterious and elusive of creatures, the Snark. In 1959 Tove Jansson, the creator of Moomin Valley and its magical inhabitants, was commissioned to illustrate a Swedish edition of Lewis Carroll’s miniature masterpiece. It proved an inspired choice, as the enigmatic charms of Jansson’s illustrative style bring to life the beauty and strangeness of Carroll’s tale.

The minds of two of the greatest children’s authors of the past 150 years meet on the page. Remarkably, amid the success of Tove Jannson’s Moomin books, her unique edition of “The Hunting of the Snark” was forgotten, and has been unavailable for over fifty years. Now, for the first time, these beautiful illustrations are matched with Lewis Carroll’s original English text, so that readers can encounter this wonderful adventure afresh through the eyes of one of Europe’s finest illustrators.