By Gabrielle Pantera
“I’ve had a laugh at some of the odd things people have sent when they knew I was writing a book,” says The Mystery of Lewis Carroll author Jenny Woolf. “One of the funniest and creepiest was a link of the Queen of Hearts and the playing-card gardeners as dressed-up praying mantises. It can be viewed in 3-D and I’ve put it on the fan page for the book.”
The Mystery of Lewis Carroll reveals new facts about the famous mathematician and author of Alice In Wonderland. Lewis Carroll’s real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Woolf uses recently discovered facts, such as Carroll’s accounts ledger and unpublished correspondence with Alice Liddell’s family. Alice was the daughter of his dean at Oxford and inspiration for Alice In Wonderland. Woolf explores how Carroll was repressed by the Victorian era as well as his upbringing as a cleric’s son. There were many rumors about Carroll, was he in love with young girls or was it the idea of innocents? There are also rumors that he had affairs with married women.
Woolf tries to dispel some of the worst rumors about Carroll. She talks about his love for photography and how he took photographs of friend’s children nude, a common practice during the Victorian age rather than an indication of pedophilia. There’s no evidence that he harmed any children, although some say he wished to marry 11-year-old Alice Liddell. Four lost volumes of his 13-volume personal diaries might tell that story, if they’re ever found.
Woolf got the idea for the book about Carroll after she found his personal bank account, forgotten and unnoticed in an archive for over a hundred years. Once transcribed and interpreted, it revealed much about this interesting man.
Woolf used documents and family letters to piece together Carroll’s life from various archives all over the world. “Some of them I visited in person, others list their holdings online and researchers can buy photocopies of relevant documents,” says Woolf. “Some of the material had been transcribed by other researchers and some experts and collectors kindly allowed me the run of their material.”
The BBC produced a half hour program about Woolf’s discovery of Carroll’s personal bank account. “There’s been movie interest in the book from a British company doing TV co-productions,” says Woolf. “It’s been interesting to me to realize how many different types of people are interested in Lewis Carroll, from sweet old ladies to the likes of Marilyn Manson.”
Jenny Woolf was born just outside of London and currently lives in Hampstead.
The Mystery of Lewis Carroll is the perfect book for those who love Alice in Wonderland and want to know more about its unusual author.
Woolf is currently writing a Gothic time-slip young adult novel, set half in Victorian times and half in modern England.
Rated: 3 Stars
The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Discovering the Whimsical, Thoughtful, and Sometimes Lonely Man Who Created “Alice in Wonderland” by Jenny Woolf. Hardcover, 336 pages, Publisher: St. Martin’s Press; 1 edition (February 2, 2010). Language: English, ISBN: 9780312612986 $27.99.
