Frankly: this biography is a piece of crap. Just the family cashing in before anybody else could. ( )

So great was the success of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass that, the moment author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) died in 1898, it was clear that there would have to be an autobiography. Indeed, one of Lewis Carroll's child friends, Isa Bowman, began almost at once to compile her own memoirs.

But the close-knit Dodgson family intended to keep its secrets. Only one man -- Dodgson's nephew Stuart Dodgson Collingwood -- was authorized to see his papers. Collingwood hurriedly compiled this book, the only "authorized" Lewis Carroll biography.

Authorized, but hagiographic, incomplete, and maddening. It does not truly represent a biography of Lewis Carroll. It is a series of sketches which do not make a whole. No one can truly understand the strange, tortured, mystical, creative author of the Alice books based on this work. We will never really understand Dodgson. But if you want to try, this is not the place to start. Start with a modern biography -- Cohen's or Clark's or Woolf's. If, having read several of the recent books, you are still interested, then try Collingwood. After all, Collingwood had access to a number of sources since destroyed. But be aware: While what it says can usually be trusted, what it leaves unsaid cannot. ( )