Schnarkverschlimmbesserung

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from www.academia.edu/9964379/Schnarkverschlimmbesserung



[1910]: Illustration by Henry Holiday (illustrator) and Joseph Swain (wood cutter) to the chapter The Banker's Fate in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark ("corrected" by Macmillan in 1910)

[1876]: Detail from an illustration by Henry and Swain to the chapter The Banker's Fate in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1st edition, 1876)

[1856]: Detail (mirror view) from The Bone Player (1856) by William Sidney Mount, now displayed in MFA, Boston.



“Improvement” in German is “Verbesserung”. If things get worse, a “Verschlimmerung” has happened. Jokingly (Germans sometimes can do that) we call “Verschlimmbesserung” what has been made worse after someone tried to improve it. That is what the publisher Macmillan did about 100 years ago. They removed a white spot from the illustration by Henry Holiday (illustrator) and Joseph Swain (wood cutter) to the chapter The Banker's Fate in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876). I found this Verschlimmbesserung in a smaller low-quality Snark edition published by Macmillan in 1910.

Perhaps the publisher thought that the white spot was Joseph Swain's mistake. But would Henry Holiday and C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) have tolerated such a mistake? As these perfectionists wouldn't have accepted any bad craftsmanship, the white spot must have had a purpose: