Phantasmagoria And Other Poems

Description

"AND did you really walk," said I, "On such a wretched night? I always fancied Ghosts could fly - If not exactly in the sky.

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Customer Reviews

I'm Not Educated Enough To Understand It
I love Lewis Carroll's work, but sometimes I just have no freaking clue what he's talking about. I experienced this sensation of vagueness a few times during my reading of the Sylvie and Bruno books, but I felt it most while reading some of the poems in Phantasmagoria.

But what I could understand I really enjoyed. I really loved Hiawatha's Photographing, Melancholetta, Size and Tears, and The Lang Coortin', although some of these poems have strangely inconclusive endings. It's interesting to see Carroll's last poem in this book, Fame's Penny Trumpet, where he's really, really mad at academic big-wigs.

Make sure you read Alice before even attempting to read this.

2007-02-18 | Boom-Body (Texas) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 3

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Vintage Carroll enhanced by Frost's art and Gardner's notes
This book has woodcuts by Arthur B. Frost that capture the humor of Carroll's poem perfectly. Martin Gardner has provided a short introduction with letters from Carroll to Frost regarding the art and to a friend with regards to para-psychological phenomena. He also provides notes for obscure words or puns. Frost and Gardner are what makes this the version of Carroll's Phantasmagoria you should read.

The poem itself is a conversation between a man of 42 and a less than adept ghost. Among the things learned are the 5 rules of behavior for a ghost, the housing requirements for a ghost etc. Carroll's vintage humor is expressed in a narrative poem of seven cantos using verses of five rhymed lines. The poetry is well written - the rhymes are not forced but natural, the humor relatively subtle.

This book justifies its being in the series "Literary Classics".

2000-09-30 (Seattle, WA USA) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 4

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We're talking the best of Carrol here.
This poem, writen in five line verses, ranks right up there with Alice in Wonderland. The poetry of Homer with the wit of Dr. Suess. I would suggest this book to anyone who likes poetry in any form.

1999-09-14 | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

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GREAT STUFF!!
This is great verse if you like Lewis Carroll. It sounds great as beat poetry, too!!

1999-03-04 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

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A Tangled Tale.

Description

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

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Complete Illustrated Lewis Carroll (Wordsworth Library Collection)

Description

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) is famed for his magical stories, "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass", here illustrated throughout the inner pages by Sir John Tenniel's much loved drawings. However, inspired by the insatiable Victorian appetite for party games, tricks and conundrums, this eccentric and polymathical Englishman also wrote many other works of a humorous, witty, whimsical and nonsensical nature such as the mock-heroic nonsense verse "The Hunting of the Snark", as well as dozens of other verses, stories, acrostics and puzzles, all of which are included in this volume. Oxford scholar, Church of England Deacon, University Lecturer in Mathematics and Logic, academic author of learned theses, gifted pioneer of portrait photography, colourful writer of imaginative genius and yet a shy and pedantic man, Lewis Carroll stands pre-eminent in the pantheon of inventive literary geniuses.

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Customer Reviews

librarynon
Even more beautiful than in the picture. Have already read things of Carroll's I had never seen before.

2010-06-09 (Your closest library, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Excellent!
Excellent book for those who love Lewis Carrol...young people and not so young!
Extremely Recommendable!

2010-05-19 | Ceci (Montevideo, Uruguay) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Perfect for any Lewis Carroll fan.
There is just so much in here and it's great fun to make your way through it all! Very enjoyable to read and reread.

2009-02-04 (USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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A classic in classic format
I love this book. I haven't read these stories in a long time and forgot how wonderful they are. The book is nicely put together and it very complete. Glad I bought it.

2009-01-06 | nitenurse (Dallas, Oregon) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Everything you need
I bought this book from Colombia. It was shipped perfectly, and the book arrived in great condition. As a book it's everything you could ask for: great illustrations and the complete works. Nice presentation. And you get all of this for such a low price. Very good edition.

2008-05-13 | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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The Hunting of the Snark

Description

The Hunting of the Snark is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Lewis Carroll is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Lewis Carroll then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.

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Customer Reviews

It is possible that the author was laying a trap
The poem is Lewis Carroll's and Henry Holiday's (and Joseph Swain's) masterpiece (5 stars). In the 2010 Evertype edition I miss the "Easter Greeting" (minus one star; the publisher chose to publish it in his edition of Alice's Adventures under Ground), which Carroll inserted into the already printed book perhaps in order to defuse that explosive ballad a bit. Hint: Compare Holiday's "Billiard marker" with Henry George Liddell, Carroll's boss at Christ Church College. There are many more conundrums in the poem and in the illustrations.

Three quotes, which are related to this book:

(1) "Are these strange words from a writer of such tales as 'Alice'? And is this a strange letter to find in a book of nonsense? It may be so. Some perhaps may blame me for thus mixing together things grave and gay; others may smile and think it odd that any one should speak of solemn things at all ... And if I have written anything to add to those stores of innocent and healthy amusement that are laid up in books for the children I love so well, it is surely something I may hope to look back upon without shame and sorrow (as how much of life must then be recalled!) when my turn comes to walk through the valley of shadows." (Lewis Carroll, 1876)

This is from the "Easter Greeting".

(2) "Perhaps I may venture, for a moment, to use a more serious tone, and to point out that there are mental troubles, much worse than mere worry, for which an absorbing subject of thought may serve as a remedy. There are skeptical thoughts, which seem for the moment to uproot the firmest faith; there are blasphemous thoughts, which dart unbidden into the most reverent souls; there are unholy thoughts, which torture, with their hateful presence, the fancy that would fain be pure. Against all these some real mental work is a most helpful ally." (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: Pillow Problems and a Tangled Tale, 1885, p. XV)

Sometimes I have the feeling, that friends of "The Hunting of the Snark" are afraid of "overanalysis". Some even may fear, that the Snark may have to leave the public library. But even if one day we would speak openly about all its textual and graphical elements, the book still will be one of the greatest children books in the library. This is, because Carroll and Holiday did not place these elements into the Snark for their personal satisfaction. Henry Holiday gave us a hint:

(3) "It is possible that the author was half-consciously laying a trap, so readily did he take to the inventing of puzzles and things enigmatic; but to those who knew the man, or who have devined him correctly through his writings, the explanation is fairly simple." (Henry Holiday on Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark", January 29th, 1898)

In the preface to the Snark, Carroll points to his intentions by pretending, that he would not point to them: "I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of this poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so cautiously inculcated in it, or to its noble teachings in Natural History." (As a logician, Carroll of course knows, how such a sentence works.) I think that Carroll was very serious about this statement. It is not ironical. The book holds the readers and the beholders of the Snark ballad responsible for the meanig which THEY give to the poem and to the illustrations. That is how Carroll's and Holiday's "nonsense" works. Keep this in mind and do not underestimate the Snark or assume any inproper intentions on the side of the authors. The book just tells the readers (and they beholders of the illustrations), what they have in their mind. Take Holiday's warning about Carroll's traps serious, then you can enjoy the book without getting caught by the Boojum.

In the Snark edition published by Evertype you won't find serious analysis. That is fine, the book has been published to offer plain Snark to the whole family. (That is why I miss the Easter Greeting.) Those who want to dig deeper should turn to Martin Gardener's "Annotaded Snark" (1981): Charles Mitchell's "The Designs for the Snark" in the 1981 Kaufmann edition of the Annotaded Snark still is a great collection of information on the Snark poem and its illustrations.

Links: Victorian Approaches to Religion As Reflected in the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (Philosphiae Doctores)|Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye, The New Version, Second edition, Revised and Enlarged|Lewis Carroll & his Illustrators: Collaborations & Correspondence 1865-1898.|The Pre-Raphaelite Illustrators: The Published Graphic Art of the English Pre-Raphaelites and Their Associates With Critical Biographical Essays and Illustrated Catalogues of the|Arne Nordheim: Hunting Of The Snark (Music Sales America)|Arne Nordheim: The Return Of The Snark (contemporary composition for trombone and tape recorder)|Nyndk: The Hunting of the Snark (Jazz, B002S395C6)

2010-01-21 | uneon | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Great poem, poor presentation
The one-star rating is only for the appearance of this edition on the Kindle 2. It is the one available for free from amazon.com. The text is riddled with extraneous characters. None of the delightful drawings are included. One does get what one pays for.

2009-06-23 | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 1

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Other Books
The Hunting of the Snark is a whacky piece of poetical silliness by Lewis Caroll. Complete nonsense, no-one knows what a Snark is, or why Snark hunters hunt it, or why anyone would want to become a Snark hunter to start with. Anyway, the poem is definitely amusing at times with some of the humour he slips in.

2007-09-03 | - Research Finished | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Carroll's Short and Sweet Chaucer Imitation
The Hunting of the Snark seems to be a very, very short imitation of The Canterbury Tales. The first chapter (titled a fit) introduces all of the occupations of all the different people going on a journey. However, instead of going on a general pilgrimage and telling tales along the way, their trip is very specific to hunting.

The Baker actually attempts to tell a story, but the Bellman (who leads the group) says there's no time for storytelling. They have to catch the Snark before nightfall.

Along with the Bellman and Baker, a Banker, a Bonnet-maker, a Butcher, a Boots, a Billiard-maker, a Barrister, a Broker, and a Beaver tag along to hunt for the Snark. The Beaver is afraid of getting cut by the Butcher, so he puts on a dagger-proof coat and talks to the Banker about buying an insurance policy.

The Beaver is involved in a hilarious scene with the Butcher later, when the two attempt to compute sums. But perhaps the funniest scene of the entire book is in the Barrister's dream when the Snark declares sentence on a pig, only to find out the pig has been dead long before the trial even began.

I'd highly recommend this short poem for Carroll fans, even though it's not big enough to contain but a small portion of what's to be found in the Alice books.

2007-02-12 | Boom-Body (Texas) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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The best nonsense I've ever read
I have read a great deal of nonsense in the past, but this was by far the best nonsense that I have ever read. There is no point, no meaning, no sense, and no boringness. It is a delightful poem (which is well written and very fun to read aloud) about a crew on a ship hunting a snark. The crew includes a captain who only rings a bell, a beaver, a cook who only cooks beavers (the beaver and the cook did not get along well), a man afraid that the snark would turn into a boojum and make him disappear, etc. As you can tell, this makes for an insanely silly poem. The subtitle is rather fitting, as my sides were definitely hurting from laughter when I was done. Well done Mr. Carroll.

Overall grade: A+

2006-05-04 (Kenosha, WI) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Symbolic Logic

Description

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Logic, Symbolic and mathematical; Mathematics / General; Mathematics / Logic; Philosophy / Logic;

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Yes, this is the Lewis Carroll who wrote Alice in Wonderland, and these two works show the same quirky humor. Here you see Carroll the mathematician at his playful best. Don't let the title of the first work mislead you--this isn't about modern symbolic logic but about ways of expressing classical logic with symbols. It's loaded with amusing problems to delight any mathematical puzzler. In the second work he turns logic into a game played with diagrams and colored counters, giving you hundreds of challenging and witty syllogisms to solve. Great mind-stretching fun.

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Customer Reviews

An unexamined Life? One must learn how to examine first, right?
Lewis Carroll {a.k.a Charles Dodgson} ... used to teach this 'stuff' to 14-year olds... with the new advent of media-entertainment: from playstation to blu-ray and everything between... all hand-eye coordintation aside.... our intelects and ability to learn has suffered..

I won't lie; this took we the better part of a year to assimilate.... all the nuances Carroll has for 'Learners'.... he even gives instructions in his intro in how to go about just that...

In short; this book changed my life.... at the risk of sounding 'blasphemous' I would say its almost more important then the bible.... for it has allowed me to seek its truth in a whole new light...as well as any disciplined study I now find interest in...just as Mr. Dodgson in his playful way promised..

I believe it was Socrates that once said: "An unexamined life is not worth living" ; Carroll upgrades the outdated examination-tool of Magnigying Glass to Hubbel-Telescope... it really is this good if your patient with yourself{another Carrollinian-tip} and persevere with the exercises built right there into the book..

All People who read this book will be changed for ever.
All People changed for ever will in turn change others for the better.

All People who change others for the better, will be changed for better.

Though this may sound like a good, moral argument... it is not a sound one.... I hope you look me up sometime and tell me why... details awaiting inside....

2009-02-25 | Our reals selves are found between the scales of Conformity & Rebellion.. (USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Symbolic logic still useful
Probably is not often taught any more as it has been replaced by other methods, still has use because it teaches alternate methods and formats of solving logic problems. Since this book was not written recently the language can be a bit confusing, but otherwise is a quick and somewhat enjoyable read.

2007-01-22 (Wichita, Kansas) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 3

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This ain't Wonderland

Some books you read to relax, some to learn, and some...well, some will make you think and wonder and grow. This is one of those.

The problems here have been around for more than a century, and yet they are still as effective in teaching logic as the day they were written.

If you are getting ready for the LSAT, this is not a bad place to start. If you just want to tease your intellect, this is a great source for hours of amusement.

2006-07-22 (Phoenix, AZ USA) | Helpful Votes: 13 | Rating: 4

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Content 5 Stars, Format 1 Star - Averages out
Lewis Carroll's contents timeless and fundamental and should be interesting to anybody with interest in Symbolic Logics or even simple logical problem solving.

However, I am kicking myself for not looking at the published year and having been fooled by the snazzy cover into assuming that the presentation would be of contemporary standards. It is ditto reproduction of fonts and pagination from the original, which a contemporary reader would have a tough time keeping up. Just look at the Table of Contents befor you buy.

2005-02-14 | nhsrikanth (Basking Ridge, NJ) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 3

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Reminds us that math can be FUN
Math is fun, but the rhetoric of most 'taught' (probably an overstatement) math (and, by extension, logic) is so incredibly dry that the forest is rarely seen for the bark on the trees. But here Carroll, with tongue lodged firmly in cheek, turns the rhetoric (and by extension, the way we think about math problems) on its ear, and the result is an often incredibly funny approach to math and logic problems which stays with you and ultimately worms its way into your quotidian. I'll also say that, as an atrociously poor student in high school, this book allowed me to ace the SATs, and then ten years later the GREs.

2000-01-20 | Philip Welsh (Cambridge, MA) | Helpful Votes: 34 | Rating: 5

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Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life

Product Details

• Notes: BUY WITH Belief, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and use to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
• ISBN13: 9780393304527
• Prerequisite: New

Description

“A fine mathematical biography.”—John Allen Paulos, New York Times Book Review Just when we thought we knew everything about Lewis Carroll, here comes this “insightful . . . scholarly . . . serious” (John Butcher, American Scientist) biography that will appeal to Alice fans everywhere. Fascinated by the inner life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, Robin Wilson, a Carroll scholar and a noted mathematics professor, has produced this revelatory book—filled with more than one hundred striking and often playful illustrations—that examines the many inspirations and sources for Carroll’s fantastical writings, mathematical and otherwise. As Wilson demonstrates, Carroll made significant contributions to subjects as varied as voting patterns and the design of tennis tournaments, in the process creating large numbers of imaginative recreational puzzles based on mathematical ideas. 60 b/w illustrations

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Customer Reviews

Very Interesting Book
I liked this book because it is a bio of Lewis Carroll from a mathematical standpoint. Yes, it does touch on his literary career, but is mostly about his development as a mathematician and an Oxford Don.

2010-01-09 (Incline Village, NV USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A Mathematical Biography
In this short but charming book, the author introduces the reader to Charles Dodgson whose pen name was Lewis Carroll - creator of Alice in Wonderland. Although the book is categorized as a biography, relatively little of Dodgson personal life is presented. Instead, the author has chosen to focus more on his mathematical genius and accomplishments. Nevertheless, one can glimpse what Dodgson's life must have been like through the many quotes from his diary and his letters, as well as through his dedication and passion for thinking up and solving various mathematical problems - several of which are presented in this book. The writing style is clear, friendly, authoritative and engaging. The book's 209 pages of main text include a great many interesting pictures and useful diagrams, thus making this a relatively short read. Because of its many mathematical problems and brain teasers, this book would most likely be loved the most by math buffs.

2009-12-18 (Orleans, ON, Canada) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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A puzzling fellow
For most people familiar with Lewis Carroll, it is because he was the writer of that classic story, Alice in Wonderland. What's less known is that even before he made his name in literature, he was a mathematician of some prominence, and that this field would creep into his fictional writing.

Actually, Lewis Carroll was a pseudonym for Charles Dodgson, an Oxford educated mathematician of the mid-1800s. He would also teach at Oxford and start to write his stories there, as well as mathematical works. Always eager to please children (including the inspirational Alice), he would become one of the first people to develop recreational mathematics, a field that focuses on some of the more wonderfully entertaining aspects of numbers (particularly the whole numbers).

Robin Wilson's Lewis Carroll in Wonderland serves as a biography of Dodgson/Carroll, focusing on his work in math. The first half or so is more filled with biographical facts; it is in the second half that we get more of the math, most of which requires no higher learning in the field. We get some of the word play, puzzles, logic problems and riddles that were Carroll's forte. Many are interesting, but admittedly, some of the problems that seem presented as logic problems are anything but, coming off more as tricky riddles and leaving the reader feel a little cheated.

If you have an interest in the life of Lewis Carroll, this would probably be a good book to read; on the other hand, if you enjoy recreational mathematics, this book is merely okay. I tend to think of this book more as a biography, so I'll rate it as a good, four-star read, well-written and with plenty of illustrations.

2009-04-12 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely,
and go on till you come to the end: then stop."

Excellent advice, of course, but in the case of Charles Dodgson, the story is so enormous, one may never finish. Author of the two famous Alice books, creator of hundreds of early photographs, mathematician with papers on logic, algebra, geometry and the mathematics of voting, author of almost 100,000 letters, and diarist with ten massive collected volumes -- it's amazing that one person could produce such a volume of work.

The Alice books have gone through hundreds of editions over the years, there are collections of his puzzles and scholarly analyses of his works on the mathematics of voting (some of which would cast light on the complexities of Amazon's Ranking systems). Dodgson was even something of a wine expert with a delicious spoof on wine tasting based on experts in tasting jam (see the first Comment).

Robin Wilson has put together an excellent summary of Dodgson's life and some superb extracts from his writing for children. He alludes to his contributions to photography, albeit with very few examples; Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll by Douglas R. Nickel is an excellent source.

The heart of the book is an assessment of Dodgson's work as a mathematician. It's not really necessary to work out all of the problems -- although it is certainly possible to do so with Wilson's help and basic algebra and geometry training. The book moves swiftly, but be warned, some of the problems are so cleverly written, you may find yourself trapped and spend several pleasant minutes, even hours, working your way through to a solution.

Either way, you'll come away from this excellent study with a deeper appreciation of Dodgson's complex imagination and with a real appreciation of Wilson's skill in bringing that imagination to life.

Robert C. Ross 2009

2009-01-18 (New Jersey) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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A different perspective on Lewis Carroll
Few people know that Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was an accomplished mathematician and logician, who held a lecturership in Maths at Oxford. Throughout his many children's books (the two Alice in Wonderland books being the best known) one can see the hand of a person obsessed with logic, numbers and wordplay.

This book provides some of Lewis Carroll's life history, but the latter half of the book focuses specifically on his life as a mathematician. He developed some famous mathematical puzzles (as given in the book), a much easier way of calculating the determinants of 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5 matrices (explained in the book), and quite an ingenious way of drawing inferences in propositional logic (a diagrammatic method he called the "Game of Logic" as shown in the book).

If you are not that much into puzzles and logic you might get more benefit from buying a plain biography on Lewis Carroll. However, the maths and puzzles are not crucial to the enjoyment of the book, and you can skip any of them without losing much. Also, the answers to the puzzles are all in the back of the book, and it is fun going through it, even if you don't work them out. If you love the quirky writing style of Lewis Carroll's books and also like working out puzzles, you will love this book and get the most out of it.

2008-12-15 | Arnold Wentzel (Cresta, South Africa) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 4

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