"No other books written for children are more in need of explication than the 'Alice' books," wrote the late Martin Gardner in one of his introductions to "The Annotated Alice." "Much of their wit is interwoven with Victorian events and customs unfamiliar to American readers today." Mark Burstein has updated and expanded on Gardner's work in "The Annotated Alice: 150th Anniversary Edition" (Norton), which explains puns, jokes, customs and historical references in the "Alice" books. To oversimplify his nuanced, detailed discussion, Douglas-Fairhurst concludes that Carroll's fascination was primarily "sentimental rather than sexual." Photography allowed him to fix children permanently at the age he loved. He played with them, wrote affectionate letters to them and photographed them hundreds of times, including a small number of nude photos.
His best writing, the biographer argues persuasively, reconciles his innovative and conservative impulses.ĭouglas-Fairhurst examines in detail the most problematic aspect of Carroll for us today: his fascination with little girls. "Today he might be diagnosed with a mild form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and even at the time his behavior struck some of his colleagues as odd," Douglas-Fairhurst writes. Had I read his book before I compiled my list of 10 favorites this year, it would have been on it.Ĭarroll was the pen name of Charles Dodgson (1832-'98), a mathematician, writer and Anglican deacon who could be a fussbudget and a pill, but also loved math and word puzzles, nonsense and inventions. "No longer was an illustrated book merely text plus pictures it was text times pictures," writes Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in "The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland" (Belknap Press).ĭouglas-Fairhust says many smart things about Carroll, his books and Alice Liddell, the real girl who inspired the namesake character.
John Tenniel's illustrations of Alice, the White Rabbit, the Hatter, Cheshire Cat and other characters made "Alice" a powerful visual experience as well as a textual one.
In its sesquicentennial year, "Alice" and its sequel, "Through the Looking-Glass" (1871), keep saying "Drink me," and our world obliges, paying homage with new editions, adaptations, sequels and scholarship. The irrational vitality of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" (1865) resists being explained away by anyone's theory, so it remains strange and fresh today.
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