Jenny Woolf - The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created Alice in Wonderland

The Mystery of Lewis Carroll

Also by Jenny Woolf

Lewis Carroll In His Own Account

Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful,
and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created
Alice in Wonderland

JENNY WOOLF

ST. MARTINS PRESS NEW YORK

To Tony, with all my love

THE MYSTERY OF LEWIS CARROLL . Copyright 2010 by Jenny Woolf. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

ISBN 978-0-312-61298-6

First published in Great Britain by Haus Publishing Ltd
First U.S. Edition: February 2010

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M any thanks to all the people who have been involved in the making of this book. I appreciate the work of those at the publishers who have worked so hard to get it right, and my agent Andrew Lownie. I would like to give particular thanks to Jaqueline Mitchell for her wise and conscientious text editing and her tireless willingness to explain the finer points of the publishing process to me.

I am grateful to Mark Richards, Chairman of the Lewis Carroll Society, London, who has offered help and advice and allowed me to borrow all sorts of books from his collection over the years, even though it may sometimes have seemed to him that I would never return them! I am also very grateful to Karoline Leach, for so many useful and interesting discussions over the years. And many special thanks to Beth Mead, descendant of Wilfred L. Dodgson, who has been kind and supportive throughout.

I am grateful also to Yoshiyuki Momma, Clare Imholz and many other scholars, collectors and members too many to mention individually from the various Lewis Carroll Societies in the UK, the USA, Japan and worldwide.

The combined expertise and energy of all these enthusiasts has brought so much hitherto obscure information about Lewis Carroll into the public domain.

It was important to me that the book was readable as well as accurate, and I am hugely grateful to my family, particularly Tony, Kath and Vanessa, who have spent hours of their time in discussing the book, and reading and commenting upon the manuscript from a readers point of view.

Last but certainly not least, I am very grateful indeed to Edward Wakeling, who has generously shared his time, expertise and extensive databases with me, and has offered staunch moral support and encouragement over the years.

In addition, I have consulted many biographical works on Lewis Carroll, including those by Carrolls nephew, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, Michael Bakewell, Anne Clark, Professor Morton Cohen, Derek Hudson, Karoline Leach and Donald Thomas, together with the Diaries edited by Edward Wakeling, and the Collected Letters and many other works, large and small, edited by Professor Morton Cohen.

I am grateful to the owners of the material who have kindly allowed me to quote. They include the Alfred C. Berol Collection; Fales Library, New York University; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin; the Special Collections Department, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries; Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia; Guildford High School, England; The Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; Morris L. Parrish Collection. Manuscripts Division. Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Princeton University Library. Extract from In the Shadow of the Dreamchild by Karoline Leach, Peter Owen, Ltd., London; Extract from Lewis Carroll by Derek Hudson by kind permission of Constable & Robinson Ltd, London. thanks to A.P. Watt Ltd. on behalf of the Executors of the C.L. Dodgson Estate for permission to quote from copyright material by Lewis Carroll, from the Letters and other books edited by Professor Morton Cohen and others. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of text and photographs to clear permission. I regret any inadvertent omissions, which can be rectified in future editions.

Photographic illustrations courtesy of: the National Portrait Gallery p 10; Getty Images pp 66, 180, 237, 264; Corbis p 264; Topham Picturepoint pp 38, 126, 211; National Media Museum Science and Society Picture Library p 238; Private Collection p 94.

I f you read all the published biographies of Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), you would end up with confusion rather than clarity. There have been scores of books written about the author of Alices Adventures in Wonderland over the last hundred years. The earlier biographies give you more fact (albeit limited in scope), and the later ones give you more fiction.

Over the last 20 years I have read some very strange biographies of Lewis Carroll, that to my mind are about a person I do not recognize at all. Having studied him for well over 30 years, researched all the available primary source material, edited his private diaries for publication, reconstructed his photographic register, and written extensively about him and his activities, I thought I knew him fairly well. But I gasp when I discover that some biographers think he was a repressed man, a philanderer, a child sexual-abuser, a shy introvert, a man with a guilty conscience, a murderer, a psychopath, a fraud, or an oddity suggestions made by a variety of writers. These suggestions probably tell us more about the biographers rather than Lewis Carroll himself.

So it is refreshing and delightful to introduce a new biography that speaks sense about the man. All biographers have to interpret the information they have available to them, but desperation should not lead to pure invention, and the search for a new angle should not lead to myth-laden nonsense.

Jenny Woolfs biography of Lewis Carroll takes notice of the evidence that is now available to help us understand and appreciate this famous Victorian poet, mathematician, writer, photographer and childrens author. This book gives a good account of what we know about Dodgsons life, and I like the way it is written. I dont agree with every sentiment expressed, but that doesnt matter. She has painted a picture of the man based on her thorough research, with accurate descriptions, and her evidence is clear and well presented.

Her analysis of Dodgsons financial activities, taken mainly from the bank accounts that she discovered and published, provides a most interesting chapter covering much new ground. Her chapter on childrenis excellent, strongly emphasizing, rightly in my view, the need to understand Dodgson in his own context the Victorian standards, attitudes, and mind-set of his time.

This book beautifully demolishes the nonsense written about him from the 1920s onwards. There are aspects of his personality that surprise and confuse us, mainly because there are apparent contradictions. Was he shy and withdrawn from society or gregarious and comfortable with others? Was he always witty in his conversations and correspondence or did he have a serious side? Was he conventional by Victorian standards or did he sometimes act in an unconventional manner? Did he follow the moral and ethical codes of his day or did he rebel against the norms of Victorian society? Was his personality gentle and easy-going, or was he strong-willed and pedantic? This biography answers these questions and reveals many different aspects of Dodgsons character some for the first time. Lewis Carrolls personality is many-faceted and complex.

Maybe this is what attracts us to him he is a very interesting person.

Edward Wakeling

Editor of Lewis Carrolls Diaries: the Private Journals of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson