This is John Tenniel’s famous 1871 illustration of the poem “Jabberwocky,” the most famous nonsense poem in the English language. Linguists have long remarked upon the genius of the way Lewis Carroll’s poem explores questions about language and meaning. But Tenniel’s illustration better shows the new Victorian awareness of Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution and the recent discoveries of dinosaurs. British people had recently been exposed to wildly popular dinosaur exhibitions, and Tenniel’s beast seems to have shared many dinosaur features, like the wings of stretched skin, the bird-like legs, and the long reptilian neck and claws.
