The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and The Secret History of Wonderland - Softcover

Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184655862X ISBN 13: 9781846558627

Publisher: Harvill Secker, 2015

Synopsis

*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Drawing on previously unpublished material, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst traces the creation and influence of the Alice books against a shifting cultural landscape – the birth of photography,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.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Magdalen College. His books include Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and The Secret History of Wonderland, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. He writes regularly for publications including The Times, Guardian, TLS and Spectator. Radio and television appearances include Start the Week and The Culture Show, and he has also acted as the historical consultant on TV adaptations of Jane Eyre, Emma and Great Expectations, the BBC drama series Dickensian, and the feature film Enola Holmes. In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvill Secker
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 184655862X
• ISBN 13: 9781846558627
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496