Lewis Carroll: A Biography

Cohen has studied the great Victorian children's author Lewis Carroll for more than 30 years and is the logical person to write a penetrating biography of him. Bedecked with period photographs, including many of Carroll's own, and with letters and drawings by him, too, that is what this big book is. Cohen does not, however, proceed strictly chronologically through the life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the Oxford mathematics instructor who adopted the pen name by which he became world famous when he published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). He begins straightforwardly tracing Dodgson's early years up through his most productive decade, the 1860s, but then retraces his steps in order to examine Dodgson's achievements and personality. He offers separate chapters on Dodgson's attitude toward children, the Alice books, Dodgson's lifelong pursuit of friendships with little girls, and the deep spiritual crisis that coincided with his 1860s productivity; then, after another eventful chapter about Dodgson's professional triumphs, chapters on his social personality, the shadow his father (an influential Anglican minister) cast upon his life, and his religious faith. The last chapters return to chronological presentation but do not stint analysis of Dodgson's later writings; indeed, throughout Cohen strives to account for how this quietly troubled, deeply religious, profoundly creative man produced not just his masterpieces for children but his excellent collodion process photographs, his innovative mathematical texts, and even his massive and frequently ingenious correspondence. Every lover of Carroll and of Victoriana should consider this a must-read book.