This is an
imaginative mystery centered on the people who inhabited the world (Oxford and
London) of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) after the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
As an
Oxford local historian myself, I think the author captures the atmosphere and
detail of Victorian Oxford superbly well and sustains the suspense to the end,
as Dodgson becomes embroiled in a series of events that involve him being
blackmailed and being treated as a murder suspect.
Many familiar elements of
Dodgson's life and many of his real associates are included, and there are numerous
subtle nods to the text of Wonderland.
And Dodgson's (to modern eyes) controversial friendships with and photographs
of children are not swerved – indeed, they are central to the plot – but are astutely
incorporated and believably explained.
This book is thought-provoking, instructive, enthralling,
and convincing.
The man the world knew as Lewis Carroll, author of the adventures of Alice, was known to his colleagues in the Christ Church Common Room as the Reverend C. L. Dodgson, a middle-aged Oxford don. His hobby was photography, especially of pubescent girls 'in their favourite dress of nothing to wear'. When evidence of the Reverend's pastime falls into the hands of Charles Augustus Howell, the infamous Victorian blackmailer, and a murder victim is fished out of the Isis, Inspector Swain is called to investigate the case that casts the shadow of doom over Dodgson. 'One of the most entertaining…
The originality of this novel in being a
first-person narration by a Catholic working man on an English-owned Irish
estate is extraordinary (as too its original popularity, since its readers must
largely have been from the class which is described so unflatteringly in the
novel!).
Edgeworth clearly took her inspiration from her own Irish workforce and, indeed, her own dissolute, spendthrift, conniving, or weak-willed relations,
hence the novel’s reliability in terms of historical accuracy – enhanced by her
own explanatory Glossary.
Sir Walter Scott loved it, and Jane Austen (whom
Edgeworth outsold in her day) was a fan – so who am I to disagree?
Set in Ireland prior to its achieving legislative independence from Britain in 1782, Castle Rackrent tells the story of three generations of an estate--owning family as seen through the eyes-and as told in the voice-of their longtime servant, Thady Quirk, recorded and commented on by an anonymous Editor. This edition of Maria Edgeworth's first novel is based on the 1832 edition, the last revised by her, and includes Susan Kubica Howard's foot-of-the-page notes on the text of the memoir as well as on the notes and glosses the Editor offers "for the information of the ignorant English reader." Howard's Introduction…
Quite
simply, because it’s hilarious – and so very prescient in envisaging, many
years before the reality, how various members of the British royal family might
turn out.
The premise is that Queen Elizabeth and her nearest and dearest have
been consigned to an exclusion zone in republican Britain, along with other
work-shy, dissolute, and villainous spongers.
Given the title, it is no spoiler
to say that Camilla does indeed become queen, with hierarchal ramifications –
the different directions followed by Harry and William, for instance, are amusingly
predictive of our current reality.
All the while, there are the dogs – who,
unbeknown to their owners, have a complete understanding of everything that is
being said and provide a comic, insightful running commentary.
A
world-famous Oxford story from a distinctive angle: the key role of the River
Thames in the creation of Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.
The book takes the reader on a literary journey of discovery along some ten
miles of the picturesque river of which Lewis Carroll and his ‘merry crew’ of
the real Alice and her sisters were so fond.
Combining
excerpts from Carroll’s diaries and the ‘Alice books with images, memoirs, and
other fiction, Alice in Waterland
sets the Oxford scene of the time and sheds light on the real places, people,
and events that stimulated Carroll’s imagination.
This new, longer, hardback third
edition includes much new material, including some poignant limericks by
Carroll, which were discovered by the author.
