The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland, by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
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The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland, by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
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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 Drawing on numerous unpublished sources, he examines in detail the peculiar friendship between the Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell, the child for whom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.
The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland, by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst- Amazon Sales Rank: #151712 in Books
- Brand: Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert
- Published on: 2015-06-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.40" h x 1.40" w x 6.30" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 496 pages
Review Remarkable…[Douglas-Fairhurst] casts a wide net, brilliantly bringing together the stories of Carroll, Alice Liddell and the Alice phenomenon itself to provide the most nuanced and convincing picture yet of Wonderland’s quirky, self-effacing creator…Thanks to The Story of Alice, we have not merely “The Secret History of Wonderland” that its subtitle promises, but also a secret history of our virtual age. (Michael Saler Wall Street Journal 2015-06-06)Offer[s] a thoughtful, far-reaching narrative, the story of three very different lives: those of Lewis Carroll, Alice Hargreaves, née Liddell, and the literary creation they both had a part in…Douglas-Fairhurst’s ability to make room for…doubts without giving in to them is one of his book’s great attractions. (Michael Wood New York Times Book Review 2015-06-14)The latest entrant to the Carrollian maze is Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, who has written The Story of Alice. As someone who teaches English at Magdalen College, Oxford, he is nicely positioned for the task―a stroll away from Christ Church, the college where the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson taught mathematics, and the longtime residence of Lewis Carroll, who was almost, but not quite, the same person. The pair of them tussled, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. (Anthony Lane New Yorker 2015-06-08)The Story of Alice is the best book on the myriad enigmas of Carroll’s heart-breaking wonderland I have ever read. (Robert McCrum The Observer 2015-03-22)Shot through with energy and ideas…The Story of Alice takes us, full throttle, back to the unalloyed passion of reading. This is what it is like to open a book, and to wonder. (Frances Wilson Daily Telegraph 2015-04-04)Douglas-Fairhurst [has] precision and liveliness as a narrator. He is constantly surprising and often shocking, quietly and carefully. The Story of Alice is splendidly interesting about the world in which the Alice books were written…Douglas-Fairhurst is a startling and exciting writer…[The Alice books] are eventually books for solitary, surprised children. How did [Carroll] do that? This book helps us to see, even while unraveling our innocence. (A. S. Byatt The Spectator 2015-03-28)Alice’s sesquicentennial--how Lewis Carroll would have loved that word--will be marked globally by events large and small…And there will be books, of course…Few are liable to be as compulsively readable as Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s The Story of Alice. [It] is informative on what went into the making of Wonderland, from the Victorians’ intense focus on the underground--both literal (the tube) and fantastic (Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth)--to Carroll’s anxiety about rapid change (like the Red Queen, he always thought he had to run faster and faster, just to stay where he was). And it’s brilliant in the way it mirrors Carroll’s own protean nature, offering no overarching theme, except to establish that its subject was not a man to provide two possible meanings for all he did and said, not so long as he could stuff in three or more. (Brian Bethune Maclean’s 2015-06-01)An eager, zestful book that is hard to define. With perceptive delicacy [Douglas-Fairhurst] mixes the outwardly staid factual biography of Dodgson with the weird emotional development of Carroll. He writes with lightly worn authority about Victorian literature. He excavates some unlikely sources submerged in Alice in Wonderland. He unpicks and interprets Carroll's ideas and techniques in his two pendant works for ‘child-friends’--Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) and the richly inventive poem The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits (1876)…Douglas-Fairhurst is fascinating on the afterlife of Alice Liddell…The Story of Alice is a pantechnicon of a book neatly loaded with good things. (Richard Davenport-Hines Sunday Times 2015-03-22)Scholarly, playful and richly entertaining…[Douglas-Fairhurst’s] literary insights are--as you might expect of an Oxford professor of English--illuminating (he links the sighing expiration of the gnat in Looking-Glass to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline). His knowledge of subjects such as Victorian theatre, children’s books, photography, inventiveness, seaside holidays and the cult of prepubescent girls is compendious but lightly worn. On the tricky subject of Carroll’s sexuality he is bracingly sensible. (Jane Shilling London Evening Standard 2015-04-02)Few have been more thorough than Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in studying Carroll’s nature and the principal object of his affections, Alice Liddell…Even though the creation of the books has been well-documented, it’s the shifting social and historical context that makes The Story of Alice so compelling…[A] magnificent book. (Charlotte Heathcote Sunday Express 2015-03-29)[A] masterful biography. (Anne Cunningham Irish Independent 2015-04-11)Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland turns 150 this year, and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst…has written a timely book about both its author and its putative real-life subject, Alice Liddell. The Story of Alice is a fascinating, unsettling read, giving us a clear-eyed view both of Liddell’s ambivalence about her fictional counterpart and of Dodgson’s preoccupation with young girls. (Lev Grossman Time 2015-06-08)Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s Becoming Dickens was one of the best literary biographies ever written about Dickens. This is no less fascinating, incisive, elegantly written and insightful…Douglas-Fairhurst has produced a work of a literary sensibility perfectly attuned to Carroll’s, yet intellectually discrete from it. (Amanda Craig The Independent 2015-03-28)The Story of Alice is much more than its coy title. It is the story of several Alices…Above all it is the story of Lewis Carroll, fastidious, surpassingly eccentric, perhaps even a trifle addlepated and certainly persnickety. (Brian Sewell The Independent 2015-04-12)More than a biography of Lewis Carroll…It is also the story of the books themselves, their inspiration, their writing, and their impact on the worlds of literature and popular culture…Will be catnip for serious Carroll enthusiasts and academics. (Michael Cart Booklist 2015-05-01)The author is in his element as Carroll’s greatest fan. Readers will rush to their childhood copies of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass to reread them. (Kirkus Reviews 2015-03-15)Douglas-Fairhurst offers readers a glimpse behind the curtain--the story of Lewis Caroll’s Alice is told through the account of her creator’s life (1832–98). This biographical approach delivers a unique perspective not only on the character but also on Carroll…The backstory of Alice in Wonderland is almost as enchanting as the tale Carroll wrote, and Douglas-Fairhurst skillfully presents it here. [An] engaging work. (Keri Youngstrand Library Journal 2015-06-01)Douglas-Fairhurst’s The Story of Alice belongs with the best books ever written in the field of Carrollian studies…For a total work of criticism, a scholarly Gesamtkunstwerk, The Story of Alice can’t be beat. In it, Douglas-Fairhurst examines the tangled lives of Carroll and Alice Liddell (later Alice Hargreaves) up until the latter’s death in 1934, while also tracking the publication history of the “Alice” books, their popularity and their ongoing cultural influence. The Oxford don’s own prose is, moreover, a delight to read: fact-filled, nicely balanced between exposition and quotation, confiding and witty. In fact, high among the pleasures of The Story of Alice is its willingness to amuse as well as instruct. (Michael Dirda Washington Post 2015-06-11)Anyone who loves the Alice books will here find new reasons to love them. (Rob Hardy Columbus Dispatch 2015-06-11)In this enormously entertaining and thoughtful new book, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst pens a kind of triple portrait of Carroll, his fictional Alice, and Alice Liddell, the books’ inspiration and first audience…Where The Story of Alice is at its richest and most rewarding is when Douglas-Fairhurst unspools the story of the fictional Alice, ‘a heroine with a thousand faces,’ whose adventures changed how readers understood children’s books forever. (Kate Tuttle Boston Globe 2015-06-21)
About the Author Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is Professor of English Literature and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. An Odd World from an Odd Fellow By David Valentino Anyone who has read them will agree Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass: 150th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe) both are very inventive tales filled with imaginative people, creatures, goings on, and brilliant wordplay. You have to wonder what the writer was like and what inspired him.Douglas-Fairhurst, Oxford professor of English literature, satisfies your curiosity in his detailed and generally interesting biography and history of Carroll, his muse, Alice Liddell, and the writing, publishing, and influence of the books. Along the way, the author provides helpful insights into Victorian life and thinking, especially in the context of views about childhood and the relationships of adults and children. The latter attempts to answer vexing questions about Carroll's fascination with female children, carried to the point where his most memorable friendships were those with his child-friends, or what's encapsulated today in the phrase the "Carroll Myth" by some of his biographers.Carroll's own words best summarize the author's conclusion on the subject, which Douglas-Fairhurst quotes in explanation of diary entries made in 1865 while Carroll awaited publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:"It is tempting to view this desire to slough off his old self ... as a covert confession of impure thoughts if not impure deeds. But rather than seeing his child-friends as the cause of these feelings, it is more likely that Carroll saw them as the solution. `It is very healthy and helpful to one's own spiritual life: and humbling too, to come into contact with souls so much purer, and nearer to God, than one feels oneself to be,' he claimed, and although boys could have this tonic effect if they were as beautiful as Tennyson's sons, they were barely equal to `the sweet relief of girl society.'"While this may ring suspect in modern ears, many will agree that historical context is everything. Victorian culture celebrated childhood and children's innocence, reflected in literature of the period amply cited by Douglas-Fairhurst. Though, the author points out, Carroll was a bit more enthusiastic on the idea than many.Certainly Carroll was a multifaceted genius: a writer, mathematician (brilliant; for example, the Dodgson condensation), logician, Anglican deacon, pioneering photographer (collodion technology), and inventor (for instance, a precursor to Scrabble). He enjoyed success and fame during his lifetime. While not a traveler, he found everything he needed for intellectual stimulation and creative inspiration near home. And he had a large network of friends, many of whom remain famous in English letters. Douglas-Fairhurst weaves all this into history of Carroll and his books. But what many will find most interesting is Carroll and his Alice, of which Douglas-Fairhurst provides much information and insight threaded throughout the book.Includes original research sources, footnotes in back, an index, and an assortment of photos within the text.
24 of 29 people found the following review helpful. Eternal Childhood By John D. Cofield "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 and another friend took the Liddell daughters rowing, and to entertain them he began to spin a tale about rabbit holes and secret gardens. Eventually he wrote down the story, revised it for publication, and found himself famous. Carroll continued to write fantasies and other stories that displayed his sly, gentle, humor as well as more ponderous publications dealing with Mathematics. He took up and became very good at photography, making a specialty of so-called "fairy photographs:" young girls either naked or barely clothed. This, along with his lifetime habit of befriending young girls, has caused a shadow to fall over his reputation. Douglas-Fairhurst does his best to resolve the questions of just how innocent Carroll's intentions were, but like his other biographers can come to no firm answer. Carroll's family destroyed some pages of his diaries, and some of the volumes dealing with the most important years of his friendship with the Liddells are missing. All we can say with certainty is that no accusations of improprieties were ever made against Carroll by any of his children friends.After gaining fame Carroll's academic career continued, intermixed with his photography hobby and the necessity of managing his "Wonderland Empire." He was an early merchandiser of his creation, encouraging and sometimes inventing things like biscuit tins and stamp holders that used John Tenniel's illustrations for his books. He helped oversee some early dramatizations as well. For her part Alice Liddell grew up, gradually distanced herself from her old friend, married a wealthy but rather dull man, and spent the rest of her life in comfortable domesticity. She and Carroll met occasionally, and when he died in 1898 she sent a beautiful wreath for his grave. She made a visit to the United States where she was lionized, then quietly passed away in 1934.Besides the biographies of Lewis Carroll and his heroine Alice, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has also chronicled Wonderland. He traces elements of Carroll's fantasy to such diverse places as the Victorians' fascination with the underground world and to the earliest science fiction writings. A Professor of English Literature and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, he is within a few minutes' walk of many of Carroll and the Liddells' favorite haunts and homes. I found his final chapters and Epilogue, in which he discusses Carroll and Wonderland's ongoing influence, especially interesting. I first read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland when I was 7 or 8, and I still remember the charm and fun of the story. I've reread it and Through the Looking Glass many times since then and have always found that same sparkle. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's biography has much of the same enchantment, and I know I shall reread and refer to it many times.
14 of 17 people found the following review helpful. Lewis Carroll, Alice Liddell, and the Continuing Fascination of the Alice Stories By Rob Hardy One hundred and fifty years ago was published the greatest of all children’s books, Alice in Wonderland, which along with its sequel six years later, _Through the Looking Glass_, has ever since been loved by children, and loved and studied and quoted by adults. In _The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland_ (Harvard University Press), biographer Robert Douglas-Fairchild brings forth the story of Lewis Carroll who was the pen name and the invention of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and Alice the heroine and Alice Liddell, the child who inspired the stories. The author, a don at Oxford himself, has looked through the city, and the stories, and Carroll’s many interests, to show the origins of the Alice tales and the effect they had on their creator and the woman who grew from the little girl for whom he had such fondness. Anyone who loves the Alice books will here find new reasons to love them.Dodgson was a truly peculiar person. He had a dull but conscientious life at Oxford. He first improvised Alice’s story for Alice Liddell and her two sisters as they went on a boating excursion in the summer of 1862. Carroll was no recluse; he never married, but he had plenty of friends and correspondents. Who he really liked to associate with, however, were little girls. We are familiar these days with scoundrels taking sexual advantage of children, or arranging for the manufacture of child pornography, and we cannot help thinking of such unpleasantness as we look back on Carroll’s activities. Douglas-Fairhurst knows this, but after the documentation he musters, it is hard not to agree with his evaluation of the issue: “The most probable conclusion is that Carroll’s strongest feelings were sentimental rather than sexual.” One of the strengths of this account of Carroll’s life is that it is also a story of Alice Liddell. As is the way of little girls, she grew up, and thus (as did so many other little girls) removed herself from Carroll’s active affection. She married a stolid and wealthy cricketer, and had three sons, two of whom died in the World War. The third became something like an agent for his mother in her capacity as the woman who inspired Alice. She needed the help; by 1932, Carroll’s centenary, she was an understandably confused old lady with a fading memory, and though she little resembled the forthright and dauntless heroine of the books, reporters and fans kept mistaking one for the other.Another admirable part of Douglas-Fairchild’s account is to show the continuing influence the Alice stories have had. Even in Carroll’s time there were tribute poems, parodies, imitations, and stage performances. You can find traces of Alice in _Finnegans Wake_, and in detective novels by Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie. She may be found in steampunk comics, videogames, and pornography. The original Disney cartoon of Alice is bland, but Tim Burton’s reimagining the story five years ago proved to be one of Disney’s highest-grossing movies. To be sure, there is nothing equivalent to the Alice books and the illustrations by Sir John Tenniel which are integral to them. Reading this account of how they came to be, and the meanings that different generations have attached to them, will deepen the appreciation of any of Alice’s many fans.
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