This was really illuminating. I like Alice and have found it dismaying to see the bad things that are said about the author, so I was pleased that this book offered a considered and reasoned picture of a very unusual and positive man who was remembered with great love and affection by so many women and girls. It is necessary to put historical figures in the context of the long ago world they lived in and too few authors do this. ( )

Unique perspective, but had trouble holding my attention. ( )

This was not as interesting as I thought it would be. Even though Carroll came from a large family they were all very private people so little is known about his childhood or personal life when older.
The book dwells mainly on the accusations regarding paedophilia put forth and gaining momentum after Freud, but not during Carroll's own lifetime. In regards to that people are going to believe whatever they want to believe regardless of the proof showing otherwise. I do not personally believe that he was---as stressed in the book, Dodgson should be judged as he would have been seen in his own time, not by modern society. ( )

I enjoyed this fairly balanced account of the life of Charles L. Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll; it was well written and well researched and I learned a lot about the subject. Two minor complaints: for a book that talks a lot about photography I thought the author could have been a bit more generous with pictures; also, it irritated me somehow that Woolf referred to Dodgson as Lewis Carroll throughout the book - this was not the name his contemporaries would have used and I don't see it as his identity. Of course, that is just a personal preference. A good read, with lots of interesting details. ( )

The answer is probably "autism." Now what was the question?

The riddle of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) somewhat resembles the ultimate question of "life, the universe, and everything" in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: we know that the answer is 42 (a number, incidentally, that seems to have fascinated Dodgson), but we don't know what it is the answer to.

Charles Dodgson is an enigma. So much so that this deeply religious man has been variously painted as a pedophile, a writer of horror stories -- even as Jack the Ripper. So there have been many attempts to "explain" him.

But what is there to explain? He went to college. He became a mathematics teacher. He came to like the children of the Dean. He wrote a number of books. He was very shy and rather isolated. He never married. He died. What is so peculiar about that?

Jenny Woolf tackles that problem head-on. This isn't a biography, although it includes much biographical information; if you want a true life story, Morton N. Cohen's monumental work would be a better place to start. Woolf instead tries to look at what we know about Dodgson's personality, using what sources she can (including his check register, which she was the first to explore).

Her conclusions seem mostly sound. He wasn't a pedophile, merely a man who loved children. He was isolated, hard to understand, probably very lonely inside. Depressive. A man who loved children because they loved him.

Writing as an autistic, I do think she has missed a key point: Dodgson's evident autism, which explains his shyness and his social failures and his peculiar friendships. But although she does not emphasize this, she gives much of the data which hints at an autism diagnosis. Her analysis explains a great deal.

This is not the place to start if you are studying Dodgson. But if you find this strange, diffident, brilliant man worth studying, this is a book you will want to read. ( )