8vo large, cloth 488pp. Following his acclaimed life of Dickens, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst illuminates the tangled history of two lives and two books. Drawing on numerous unpublished sources, he examines in detail the peculiar friendship between the Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell, the child for whom he invented the Alice stories, and analyzes how this relationship stirred Carroll s imagination and influenced the creation of Wonderland. It also explains why "Alice in Wonderland" (1865) and its sequel, "Through the Looking-Glass" (1871), took on an unstoppable cultural momentum in the Victorian era and why, a century and a half later, they continue to enthrall and delight readers of all ages. "The Story of Alice" reveals Carroll as both an innovator and a stodgy traditionalist, entrenched in habits and routines. He had a keen double interest in keeping things moving and keeping them just as they are. (In Looking-Glass Land, Alice must run faster and faster just to stay in one place.) Tracing the development of the Alice books from their inception in 1862 to Liddell s death in 1934, Douglas-Fairhurst also provides a keyhole through which to observe a larger, shifting cultural landscape: the birth of photography, changing definitions of childhood, murky questions about sex and sexuality, and the relationship between Carroll s books and other works of Victorian literature. In the stormy transition from the Victorian to the modern era, Douglas-Fairhurst shows, Wonderland became a sheltered world apart, where the line between the actual and the possible was continually blurred." "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There" were published in 1865 and 1871, but they are still widely venerated as essential parts of the Golden Age of Children's Literature (which can be dated from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1920s). Unlike other authors whose works are part of that era like Kenneth Grahame, E. Nesbit, or A.A. Milne, Alice's creator Charles Lutwidge Dodgson or Lewis Carroll had no children of his own. But like yet another Golden Age author J.M. Barrie, Carroll did have contacts with children who inspired his creativity, the most influential of them being Alice Pleasaunce Liddell. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's new biography of Lewis Carroll is also a biography of Alice herself, as well as a chronicle of the beginning, development, and ongoing influence of the worlds he created for her. Scholarly and highly readable, The Story of Alice should become a standard reference for all lovers of Wonderland. Many times authors are believed to be writing out of the pain of miserable childhood experiences. This is not the case with Charles L. Dodgson, the oldest son of a large family born to a Church of England clergyman. Thorughout his childhood he loved to write and stage manage plays and other entertainments for his siblings. Tall, shy, and with an embarrassing stammer or lisp, Dodgson did not enjoy his years at prep school and at Rugby, not really beginning to blossom until he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford University, in 1850. There, although he found the college hidebound and in need of reform and the students more interested in socializing than academics, he demonstrated such abilities in Mathematics that he was guaranteed a scholastic career. He remained at Christ Church for the rest of his life, an indifferent Mathematics professor but increasingly displaying his writing and dramatic abilities. His shyness and speech impediment made it easier for him to find friends among children than adults. This was important, because shortly after Carroll began his Oxford career the new dean of Christ Church, Henry George Liddell, moved into a house whose garden was overlooked by Carroll's windows. Carroll befriended the Liddells and became a companion of their three elder daughters, especially the middle one, Alice. On July 4, 1862, Carroll an
Scopri come utilizzare
Scopri come utilizzare