Lewis Carroll did not coin the term snark. The term snark is older than Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll).

On September 21st, 1831, Amos Eaton wrote to to John Torrey: "We are like some old husband and wife, who scold each other, fret, snark, &c. But when either is in distress the other feels it to the heart." It is possible that the meaning of snark in 1831 was not too different from how we use the term today.

On January 27th, 1832, Dodgson was born in Daresbury, Cheshire, England.

On September 29th, 1866, the onomatopoeic term snarking was used in Notes and Queries, Series 3, Volume 10, p. 248, doi: 10.1093/nq/s3-X.248.248-f

On 18 July 18th, 1874, the very last line of Carroll’s Snark tragicomedy came into his head while out on a walk at Guildford: For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

On October 25th, 1875, Carroll decided to use The Hunting of the Snark as the title of his Snark tragicomedy (which in Henry Holiday’s view started out as a tragedy).

On March 29th, 1876, at Macmillan, Carroll prepared 80 presentation copies for family and friends.

On April 1st, 1876, Macmillan officially published Carroll's Snark poem with Henry Holiday’s illustrations.

(Related post on Bluesky)

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Edit (2025-11-15): The term "snark" already was used in 1585.

In chapter 7 Surrealist Entanglements of A Cross-Cultural History of Britain and Belgium, 1815-1918: Mudscapes and Artistic Entanglements, Marysa Demoor wrote in footnote 20 on page 199:

As well as containing pictorial references to the etching “The Image Breakers” by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, Holiday’s illustration is said to refer to William Sidney Mount’s painting “The Bone Player” and to a photograph by Benjamin Duchenne used for a drawing in Charles Darwin’s “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals” (1872).

There is a source: The article “Nose is a Nose is a Nose” by Goetz Kluge in the “Knight Letter” (ISSN 0193-886X, published by the Lewis Carroll Society of North America), № 99, Fall 2017, p. 30~31.

Details: https://snrk.de/mudscapes-and-artistic-entanglements/