Story Of Alice
£25.00
Drawing on previously unpublished material, ‘The Story of Alice’ illuminates the tangled history of two lives and two books, examining the peculiar friendship between Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson, Lewis Carroll, and Alice Liddell, the child for whom he invented the Alice stories. It analyses how their relationship influenced the creation of Wonderland, how the two Alice books took on an unstoppable cultural momentum in the Victorian era, and why 150 years later they continue to enthrall and delight us.
*Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Biography Award*
*BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week *
Wonderland is part of our cultural heritage – a shortcut for all that is beautiful and confusing; a metaphor used by artists, writers and politicians for 150 years.
But beneath the fairy tale lies the complex history of the author and his subject: of Charles Dodgson, the quiet academic, and his second self, Lewis Carroll – storyteller, innovator and avid collector of ‘child-friends’. And of his ‘dream-child’, Alice Liddell, and the fictional alter ego that would never let her grow up.
This is their secret story: a history of love and loss, of innocence and ambiguity, and of one man’s need to make Wonderland his refuge in a rapidly changing world.
Drawing on previously unpublished material, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst traces the creation and influence of the Alice books against a shifting cultural landscape – the birth of photography, changing definitions of childhood and sexuality and the tensions inherent in the transition between the Victorian and modern worlds.
| Weight | 0.922 kg |
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| Dimensions | 24 × 16.2 × 4.4 cm |
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| Cover | Hardback |
| Pages | 488 |
| Language | English |
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| Dewey | 823.8 (edition:23) |
| Readership | General – Trade / Code: K |
