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Loading... The Alice Behind Wonderland (2011)by Simon Winchester
None.  jbd1 | Feb 23, 2013 |  Brings understanding of the author. Lewis Carroll and his relationship to the Alice Liddell and her family. An excellent and academic resource for an author study or literature analysis, but easy and interesting reading. (  ) MarthaL | Dec 27, 2011 | The story centers on a photograph of a young girl, Alice Liddell, taken by Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) in 1858. Later on, Mr. Dodgson, a lecturer at Oxford University, tells young Alice and her siblings a story about another Alice and her adventures in an underground place called Wonderland. Alice asks her friend to write the story down for her. And he does. The Alice Behind Wonderland is a short book, fewer than 100 pages, really an extended essay. But the author crams a lot into the book. What I found most fascinating was his description of early photographic processes and cameras. I’ve read about early photography before, but never the details of what a photographer had to go through to obtain a finished photo. Whew! Makes today’s digital cameras even more amazing. As I was reading through the book, I kept on thinking something was missing. Then it dawned on me. In a book that focuses so much on photography, there were no photos other than the one of Alice on the dust jacket. I don’t know if the author was unable to get permissions to include some of the photos that he described at length (making it quite evident that a picture is, indeed, worth a thousand words), or whether this edition was intentionally bare-bones. Still, The Alice behind Wonderland was enlightening and a very quick read. (  ) NewsieQ | Sep 22, 2011 | I thought this looked interesting after recently reading Alice I Have Been. Although it looked like it was going to give more details about the relationship between Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and Alice Liddell (the little girl he wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for), it was really just basic biographical information about the two. And waaaaay too much detail about how photographs were taken and developed in 1856. Disappointing. (  )1  saramllr | Apr 16, 2011 | no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0195396197, Hardcover)On a summer's day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church College in Oxford, Charles Dodgson, a lecturer in mathematics, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera, recently purchased in London.Simon Winchester deftly uses the resulting image--as unsettling as it is famous, and the subject of bottomless speculation--as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of English literature. Dodgson's love of photography framed his view of the world, and was partly responsible for transforming a shy and half-deaf mathematician into one of the world's best-loved observers of childhood. Little wonder that there is more to "Alice Liddell as the Beggar Maid" than meets the eye. Using Dodgson's published writings, private diaries, and of course his photographic portraits, Winchester gently exposes the development of Lewis Carroll and the making of his Alice. Acclaim for Simon Winchester "An exceptionally engaging guide at home everywhere, ready for anything, full of gusto and seemingly omnivorous curiosity." --Pico Iyer, The New York Times Book Review "A master at telling a complex story compellingly and lucidly." --USA Today "Extraordinarily graceful." --Time "Winchester is an exquisite writer and a deft anecdoteur." --Christopher Buckley "A lyrical writer and an indefatigable researcher." --Newsweek (retrieved from Amazon Tue, 19 Apr 2011 05:28:10 -0400) In The Alice Behind Wonderland, Simon Winchester uses the famous photograph of Alice as the launching pad for an appreciative energetic and penetrating look at the inspiration behind, and the making of, one of the greatest classics of children's literature.… (more) |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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Though a great many other photographs are described in detail in the text, from those taken of Alice and her sisters on the same afternoon as the famous one, to Dodgson's early attempts, to what must be some remarkable photos of animal skeletons he was hired to document, only the one image is included in the book (on the jacket and as the frontispiece). This is somewhat unfortunate, as others would have added a great deal to the book. (