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4.5
.. to make another seem superfluous.’Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 to 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll was an Anglican deacon, logician, mathematician, photographer and writer. It’s almost 150 years since, on 26 November 1865, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ was first published in the UK. It’s a book that has brought a lot of joy to at least four generations in my own family, as have other of his literary works. I’m not sure, though, that any of us have read any of his mathematical works.Many biographies have been written about Lewis Carroll, but this one is different. Edward Wakeling has had an interest in Lewis Carroll since 1975, and now owns one of the finest collections of Carroll material in private hands. By drawing on Lewis Carroll’s voluminous correspondence, Edward Wakeling’s biography looks at Lewis Carroll from within his own social circle. Lewis Carroll’s correspondence numbered almost 100,000 items by the time of his death, and of those almost 6,000 (of which 4,000 have never before been published) are in Edward Wakeling’s personal database.Who did Lewis Carroll correspond with? Was his world as child-centric, as some have claimed?‘From childhood, Dodgson had a natural flair for telling amusing and entertaining stories, and with a large number of siblings at his disposal he had a readymade audience.’From reading this book it becomes clear just how wide Lewis Carroll’s circle was. His correspondents included many of the leading academics, artists, composers, musicians and publishers of the period, as well as some members of the royal family. There are also some delightful letters to and from children. I enjoyed reading about Lewis Carroll’s photography hobby, which he gave up in 1880, and his efforts to obtain the best illustrations for his books.There’s a wealth of detail in this book, and while the information provided is fascinating, it is neither a quick nor an easy read. Until I read this book, I had little knowledge about Lewis Carroll’s life other than a few biographical details, and that his real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. I’d read occasional views that his interest in children was ‘unhealthy’ but was unaware of the background to such claims. Reading this book, while it seems clear that Carroll liked children and they liked him, his friendships seem to have been the kind of friendships that many of us were once freely able to enjoy with adults who were not family. How sad it is that times have changed. How important it is that we look at such friendships through the prism of the times in which they flourished.‘This book is an attempt to confound some of the more outrageous biographies that have been published in the last half-century, where the writers have not availed themselves of the primary sources that survive and have indulged in all manner of speculation and mythmaking.’I enjoyed reading this biography, and I now want to reread ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. I may not be able to recapture the pure magic of my first read about 50 years ago, but I know that I will enjoy it even more knowing a little more about the man who wrote it.Note: My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher I B Tauris for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book.Jennifer Cameron-Smith
