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.
