On February 15, the British Library will release a new facsimile edition of Lewis Carroll’s original manuscript, Alice’s Adventures under Ground (which they have in their collection, which, in turn, is well worth visiting if you happen to find yourself in London). “In an accompanying commentary, Sally Brown sketches a portrayal of Carroll, and traces the stages through which the story passed…” (This may be part or all of this.)

If you don’t want to pay postage from the U.K., the giant online bookseller (which shall remain nameless since they don’t pay me for advertising) is currently pre-selling the book at a discount.

David Denby’s new book, Snark (Simon & Schuster, 2009), is “‘a polemic in seven fits’ and places his observations of contemporary culture against a history of satire and invective. After introducing the current state of snark and its practitioners, he returns to the earliest dabblers in snark, first citing the origin of the word. For that, he credits the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, who first used the word in a mock epic called The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits. While Carroll hunted the snark (a creature that, among other things, “has no sense of humor and can’t stand puns”) he was no writer of snark himself.”
From “Of seethe, snarl and glinting malice” by Carol Herman of the Washington Times.