Jabberwocky

Lore & Background

The first stanza of what would become 'Jabberwocky' was written by Lewis Carroll a decade before the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, while he was in Croft-on-Tees, where his parents resided. It was printed in 1855 in Mischmasch, a periodical he wrote and illustrated for the amusement of his family, under the title 'Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry'. The rest of the poem was written during Carroll's stay with relatives at Whitburn, near Sunderland. The story may have been partly inspired by the local Sunderland area legend of the Lambton Worm and the tale of the Sockburn Worm.

In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice finds a book written in seemingly unintelligible language and, realizing she is in an inverted world, holds a mirror to one of the poems to read the reflected verse of 'Jabberwocky'. John Tenniel reluctantly agreed to illustrate the book in 1871, and his illustration of the Jabberwock may reflect the contemporary Victorian obsession with natural history and the fast-evolving sciences of palaeontology and geology. Tenniel gave the Jabberwock 'the leathery wings of a pterodactyl and the long scaly neck and tail of a sauropod.'

Reader's Guide

Jabberwocky is significant as a landmark of nonsense verse, introducing playful, whimsical language that has given English nonsense words and neologisms such as 'galumphing' and 'chortle'. The poem's lexicon consists largely of nonce words of Carroll's own invention, without intended explicit meaning, and the linguistic ambiguity and uncertainty throughout both the book and the poem may largely be the point. In later writings, Carroll discussed some of his lexicon, commenting that he did not know the specific meanings or sources of some of the words. The character of Humpty Dumpty explains some nonsense words from the first stanza, but Carroll's personal commentary on several words differs from Humpty Dumpty's. For example, a 'rath' is described by Humpty Dumpty as 'a sort of green pig,' while Carroll's notes for the original in Mischmasch suggest a 'rath' is 'a species of Badger' that 'lived chiefly on cheese.' The poem's legacy includes extended analysis in The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner, and its influence on later writers such as Kipling, who used 'galumphing.'

Did You Know?

• The first stanza of 'Jabberwocky' was printed in 1855 in Mischmasch, a periodical Carroll wrote for his family.
• Carroll asked his publishers, Macmillan, in 1868 about printing a page in reverse, but the cost dissuaded him.
• John Tenniel reluctantly agreed to illustrate the book in 1871, giving the Jabberwock pterodactyl-like wings and a sauropod-like neck and tail.
• Carroll's own pronunciation guide for 'slithy' was to say it as if it were the two words 'sly, thee'.