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The Alice Behind Wonderland
Click for more information  Eaudiobook
2011
Fiction/Biography Profile
Genre
NonFiction
Literary
Topics
Writers
Literary life
Artists' models
Photographers
Literary critics
Setting
England - Europe
Time Period
1858 -- 19th century
Large Cover Image
Trade Reviews
Library Journal Review
Winchester (The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary) makes photography the focus for this small biography, in particular the famous photo Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll made of the probable model for Alice in Wonderland when she was six in 1858. Alice Liddell, daughter of a family friend, posed as a beggar girl, looking seductive in rags and revealing one small nipple. This photograph, as well as Dodgson's interest in the company of children and in photographing them, has led to accusations of pedophilia. Winchester points out, though, that Dodgson's attitude of idealizing children was no different from that of his Victorian contemporaries; in fact, he took hundreds of other photos that were well received. Also, no evidence exists of Dodgson's being accused of any sexual improprieties. Describing the early development of photography and Dodgson's growing expertise, Winchester provides a new perspective on the shy bachelor who wrote one of the world's most famous children's stories, while questioning the most recent scholarship that neglects the role of photography in Dodgson's life. VERDICT An important addition to the burgeoning collection of Dodgson scholarship, this book will appeal to scholars and general readers and is recommended to all.-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Winchester (The Professor and the Madman) explores the story behind Alice in Wonderland by focusing on an 1858 portrait taken by the eccentric Charles Dodgson-best known by his pen-name, Lewis Carroll. The subject of the photo is six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the dean of Oxford's Christ Church College who, encouraged by Dodgson, is dressed as a ragged beggar-maid-a costume inspired by a Tennyson poem. The dean's daughter provided Dodgson with not only the name and inspiration for the main character of his now infamous book but she also asked him to write it as a gift for her. Winchester's overall tone is unfortunately self-indulgent, and his take that Alice is seductive and coquettish in the 1858 photo is questionable. He stretches his brief essay with the differences between daguerreotype and calotype photographic images while skimping on Dodgson's relationship with Alice's mother. Readers will more likely be interested in Winchester's benign interpretation of Dodgson's character than his preoccupation with one particular photograph. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
The prolific, critically acclaimed Winchester (The River at the Center of the World, 1996; The Professor and the Madman, 1998; Krakatoa, 2003; etc.) describes his latest book as the photographic backstory of the Alice in Wonderland saga. As such, it is not only a thoughtful examination of Dodgson's many celebrated photographs of Alice Liddell, the girl who was the inspiration for his famous fantasy, but also a brief history of the development of photography in the nineteenth century and Dodgson's keen interest in it. While there is little that is new here about Dodgson's curious life and eccentricities, the background material about photography will be unfamiliar to many readers. Happily, it is illuminating, and even its more technical aspects are made interesting and accessible by Winchester's always elegant writing. The book concludes on a melancholy note, with a brief summary of the many sadnesses of Alice's adult life and her lonely death.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Winchester (Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, 2010, etc.) offers his take on the relationship between author/amateur photographer Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and Alice Pleasance Liddellthe "Alice" in his Wonderland and the subject of a certain unsettling photograph.To fill in the background, the author retraces Dodgson's early schooling from years at the Rugby School to his arrival at Oxford (that "forcing-house for flaneurs") and three formative "epiphanies": the beginning of his side career as Lewis Carroll, a developing friendship with the children of his college's new dean, Henry George Liddell, and his discovery of the pleasures of the recently developed camera. Dodgson shot albums of photographs, but one image of Alice comes in for particular attention: a portrait of the 7-year-old dressed in rags, bare of shoulder and bearing "an expression of impish, secret knowledge, a winsome look that manages to be both confident and disturbing." This and other provocative child portraitsalong with pages tantalizingly razored from Dodgson's diaries of the periodfueled modern accusations that have gone so pervasively viral that any random passerby will "know" more about Dodgson's pedophilia than his literary works. Not so fast, cautions Winchester, making connections and offering counter-interpretations as he goes. The author judiciously considers the evidence, suggesting credible alternative views before finishing off with a quick pass through Alice's later life and role as unwilling celebrity.Quite a slender volumethe actual narrative runs under 100 pagesbut, as usual with Winchester, well-founded, witty and perceptive.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Summary
On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London.



Simon Winchester deftly uses the resulting image--as unsettling as it is famous, and the subject of bottomless speculation--as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of English literature. Dodgson's love of photography framed his view of the world and was partly responsible for transforming a shy and half-deaf mathematician into one of the world's best-loved observers of childhood. Little wonder that there is more to "Alice Liddell as the Beggar Maid" than meets the eye. Using Dodgson's published writings, private diaries, and of course his photographic portraits, Winchester gently exposes the development of Lewis Carroll and the making of his Alice.
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