The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created "Alice in Wonderland"

by Jenny Woolf, Edward Wakeling (Foreword by)

Overview

In The Mystery of Lewis Carroll, Jenny Woolf brings to life the brilliant, secretive, and self-contradictory creator of Alice in Wonderland, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll. Reveling in double meanings and puzzles, in his fiction and his life, Carroll always—at least in part—seemed hidden, unknowable. Woolf uses rarely-seen and recently discovered sources like Carroll's private bank account records, letters from the family of the "real" Alice Liddell and unpublished correspondence with Carroll's own relatives. In shining new light upon Carroll, Woolf sets this perennially fascinating man firmly in the context of the English Victorian age and tackles many of the questions that have persisted throughout the years.

- Was it Alice or her older sister that caused a coolness between Carroll and the Liddell family?

- How true is the gossip both about about pedophilia and certain adult women that became attached to him?

- What could be the "romantic secret" which many think ruined Carroll's personal life?

- Who caused Carroll major financial trouble, and why have this person's identity and actions remained unknown till now?

Woolf discards the myths and lets us see Carroll as he truly was: a brilliant product of the Victorian Age, and a genius whose famous stories continue to fascinate readers almost 150 years after their initial publication.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312673710
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/15/2011
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

JENNY WOOLF has written for The Sunday Times Magazine (UK), Reader’s Digest, and Islands and has reviewed children’s literature for Punch. She is author of Lewis Carroll in His Own Account. She lives in England.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Foreword Edward Wakeling ix

A Personal Introduction 1

1 'My Father and Mother were honest though poor...': Family 11

2 'You can do arithmetic, I trust?': Oxford Life 39

3 'Nose in the Middle, Mouth Under': The Human Body 67

4 'This Strange Wild Man from Other Lands': Love and Sex 95

5 'Children Are Three-Fourths of my Life': Children 127

6 'Child of the Pure Unclouded Brow': Alice 153

7 'That Awful Mystery': Religion and the Supernatural 181

8 'And Would You Be a Poet?': Literature and Storytelling 213

9 '...took the Camera of Rosewood': Photography 239

10 'He Offered Large Discount, he Offered a Cheque': Money 265

A Personal Conclusion 289

Appendix: Report of Dr Yvonne Hart on Carroll's neurological symptoms 298

Select Bibliography 300

Notes 303

Index 318

Editorial Reviews

Goes beyond the central controversy over his life to shed light on a man who has proved elusive to his biographers.” —Wall Street Journal

“Engaging...Woolf writes with affection as well as admiration for the man revealed by her research.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

From the Publisher

Jenny Woolf's engaging biography…eschews the minutiae and factual richness of [Morton N.] Cohen's magisterial biography of 1995. Her aim is to present a convincing portrait, and she writes with affection as well as admiration for the man revealed by her research.
—The Washington Post

Michael Dirda