The Preface … Fiat Snark!

I've spent the last year working on a sequential version of Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark and I expect to spend at least another year on it. Hopefully, a publisher will be found for it (they all love the Snark but is Ms Carroll truly relevant to today's YAs? Why doesn't she answer her phone? Who's her agent anyway?)

In the meantime, maybe it's best to let my Snark venture out on its own with little baby steps, enough to whet the appetite of any lurking boojums. Plus, it's an exhibitionist and loves to be talked about. I still have no cover idea but I've finished the author's preface. I decided to focus on Carroll's portmanteaux. His revolutionary concept of the role that luggage can play in verbal communication must have baffled train porters and pedants alike.

Here is Figure 1:



Fig. 1 – A visual explication of the portmanteau concept. Shown here is Mr. Lewis Carroll, a poet and the author of this preface and a portmanteau of Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, mathematics don at Christ Church College, Oxford.

And for the truly perplexed, Figure 2:



Fig. 2 – A visual explication of the portmanteau concept. Shown here is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics don at Christ Church College, Oxford and a portmanteau of Mr. Lewis Carroll, a poet and the author of this preface.

Hooray for the Victorian concept of what's suitable for children! More to come ...