Victoria Through the Looking Glass

This is an older, 1945 book that is a biography of Lewis Carroll. The book may be older but it's still one of the best books I've read on the subject which is something which tends to happen, that older books seem more complete than newer ones.

The book is 388 pages long and includes appendices, footnotes, a bibliography and even an index. It also happens to be a very well balanced book about Charles Dodgson, looking at both the really good things about him and at the same time being willing to point out his flaws and criticize some of his work.

As an example of how complete the book is there's more on his trip to Russia then I have found on all other biographies of his put together. The book also explains where the name Cheshire cat actually comes from (an area known, at least then, as Cheshire.) This is something other books I've read either skip over and don't explain.

I'll point out just a few of the highlights from the book:

There's a lot of psychological analysis of him but, at least in this book, it appears to be well done and logical. For example, the author sees Alice as his positive traits while the White Rabbit is his teaching self, nervous, fussy self.

One of the thing other books haven not explained is why he gave up photography totally. This book says that a new process had been developed that used dry plates and he simply could not accept the new-fangled approach. He tended to be what might be termed a stick-in-the-mod in relation to certain types of progress.

The book holds that he apparently did have some kind of romantic relationship with someone but that seems to have not ended well.

The author says that '...Carroll preferred little girls because his emotional clock had been jammed.' It was a sort of Peter Pan type of thing where he didn't want the little girls to grow up and maybe seems to have been wanting to fit in with them at least mentally.

The author also discusses Carroll's tendency to photograph little girls in the nude and she ties it in with his inability to have meaningful adult man-woman relationships.

Anyhow, there's a whole lot of information in this book and I consider it a must to get and read.

Main Index

Main Alice in Wonderland index page