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Ceci n'est pas une cloche

These are only lines, no bell.

Segment from illustration by Henry Holiday to Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876).

In Lewis Carroll's, Henry Holiday's (and Joseph Swain's) illustrations to The Hunting of the Snark, there is a bell in all but two illustrations. You find it even on the front cover and the back cover. The left side of an illustration without a clearly recognizable bell is shown above. It has been drawn by Holiday and cut into a woodblock by Swain. Where is the bell (if there is any)?

(The Bellman's map is the second exception. There is no bell either. But that illustration hasn't necessarily been made by Henry Holiday. And neither did Joseph Swain sign that map. A typographer could have made it.)
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3 comments

Götz Kluge said:

h12
10 years ago ( translate )

Götz Kluge said:

An older version of the "bell search" image:
The Bell?
10 years ago

Götz Kluge said:

Yes, "this is not a bell". In this illustration without bell I searched for intentional irregularities in the hatching. What I found, of course still doesn't depict a clearly recognizable bell. Joseph Swain might have played with the hatching just for fun. Holiday and Carrol (Dodgson), who usually didn't tolerate mistakes, also didn't bother to ask Swain to remove that little white scratch from the woodblock.

Here is a clear depiction of a bell:
The Baker's 42 Boxes

And a ship with the name "Bell" (or anything related to that)? Why not? The Snark hunt goes on.
10 years ago