With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury.
This selection of Carroll’s works includes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, both containing the famous illustrations by Sir John Tenniel.
This selection of Carroll’s works includes Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, both containing the famous illustrations by Sir John Tenniel. No greater books for children have ever been written. The simple language, dreamlike atmosphere, and fantastical characters are as appealing to young readers today as ever they were. Meanwhile, however, these apparently simple stories have become recognised as adult masterpieces, and extraordinary experiments, years ahead of their time, in Modernism and Surrealism. Through wordplay, parody and logical and philosophical puzzles, Carroll engenders a variety of sub-texts, teasing, ominous or melancholy. For all the surface playfulness there is meaning everywhere. The author reveals himself in glimpses.
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898). His children's stories, such as 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', 'Through the Looking Glass' and 'What Alice Found There', appeal to readers of all ages.
Lewis Carroll was the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writer and mathematician, who was best known for writing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), and Through the Looking Glass (1871).
Although published ostensibly as children’s books their satirical content and verbal wit have resulted in them appealing to readers of all ages. He invented his pen name by translating his first two names into the Latin ‘Carolus Lodovicus’ and then anglicising them.
Carroll was born at Daresbury in Cheshire in 1832, the son of a clergyman and the firstborn of eleven children. He began to entertain himself and his family from an early age with magic tricks, marionette shows and writing a home-made magazine.
Between 1846 and 1850 he attended Rugby School and then Christ College, Oxford from where he graduated in 1854. He stayed on at Oxford, lecturing and teaching, though with some difficulty due to his inherent shyness and stammer. These afflictions later affected his decision to be ordained as a priest, though he had taken deacon’s orders in 1861.
It was at this stage of his life that Carroll became both interested in and proficient at the art of photography, particulary the photographing of young girls, one of whom, Alice Liddell, became the model for the fictional Alice. Carroll’s comic and children’s works also include collections of humorous verse. After these later publications his genius somewhat faded, though his reputation never waned. He remained at Oxford until his death from bronchitis in 1898.
