We are still wondering about Alice, where she came from and where she went, and Douglas-Fairhurst…wants to inform our wonder rather than put it entirely to rest. His book doesn't explore a great deal of new material, but it does offer a thoughtful, far-reaching narrative, the story of three very different lives: those of Lewis Carroll, Alice Hargreaves, née Liddell, and the literary creation they both had a part in.

Offer[s] a thoughtful, far-reaching narrative, the story of three very different lives: those of Lewis Carroll, Alice Hargreaves, née Liddell, and the literary creation they both had a part in… Douglas-Fairhurst’s ability to make room for…doubts without giving in to them is one of his book’s great attractions.

[A] masterful biography.

The latest entrant to the Carrollian maze is Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, who has written The Story of Alice. As someone who teaches English at Magdalen College, Oxford, he is nicely positioned for the task—a stroll away from Christ Church, the college where the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson taught mathematics, and the longtime residence of Lewis Carroll, who was almost, but not quite, the same person. The pair of them tussled, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

More than a biography of Lewis Carroll… It is also the story of the books themselves, their inspiration, their writing, and their impact on the worlds of literature and popular culture… Will be catnip for serious Carroll enthusiasts and academics.

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s Becoming Dickens was one of the best literary biographies ever written about Dickens. This is no less fascinating, incisive, elegantly written and insightful… Douglas-Fairhurst has produced a work of a literary sensibility perfectly attuned to Carroll’s, yet intellectually discrete from it.

The Story of Alice is much more than its coy title. It is the story of several Alices… Above all it is the story of Lewis Carroll, fastidious, surpassingly eccentric, perhaps even a trifle addlepated and certainly persnickety.

Alice’s sesquicentennial—how Lewis Carroll would have loved that word—will be marked globally by events large and small… And there will be books, of course… Few are liable to be as compulsively readable as Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s The Story of Alice. [It] is informative on what went into the making of Wonderland, from the Victorians’ intense focus on the underground—both literal (the tube) and fantastic (Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth)—to Carroll’s anxiety about rapid change (like the Red Queen, he always thought he had to run faster and faster, just to stay where he was). And it’s brilliant in the way it mirrors Carroll’s own protean nature, offering no overarching theme, except to establish that its subject was not a man to provide two possible meanings for all he did and said, not so long as he could stuff in three or more.

Douglas-Fairhurst’s The Story of Alice belongs with the best books ever written in the field of Carrollian studies… For a total work of criticism, a scholarly Gesamtkunstwerk, The Story of Alice can’t be beat. In it, Douglas-Fairhurst examines the tangled lives of Carroll and Alice Liddell (later Alice Hargreaves) up until the latter’s death in 1934, while also tracking the publication history of the ‘Alice’ books, their popularity and their ongoing cultural influence. The Oxford don’s own prose is, moreover, a delight to read: fact-filled, nicely balanced between exposition and quotation, confiding and witty. In fact, high among the pleasures of The Story of Alice is its willingness to amuse as well as instruct.

In this enormously entertaining and thoughtful new book, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst pens a kind of triple portrait of Carroll, his fictional Alice, and Alice Liddell, the books’ inspiration and first audience… Where The Story of Alice is at its richest and most rewarding is when Douglas-Fairhurst unspools the story of the fictional Alice, ‘a heroine with a thousand faces,’ whose adventures changed how readers understood children’s books forever.

The Story of Alice is the best book on the myriad enigmas of Carroll’s heart-breaking wonderland I have ever read.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland turns 150 this year, and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst…has written a timely book about both its author and its putative real-life subject, Alice Liddell. The Story of Alice is a fascinating, unsettling read, giving us a clear-eyed view both of Liddell’s ambivalence about her fictional counterpart and of Dodgson’s preoccupation with young girls.

Shot through with energy and ideas… The Story of Alice takes us, full throttle, back to the unalloyed passion of reading. This is what it is like to open a book, and to wonder.

Anyone who loves the Alice books will here find new reasons to love them.

Few have been more thorough than Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in studying Carroll’s nature and the principal object of his affections, Alice Liddell… Even though the creation of the books has been well-documented, it’s the shifting social and historical context that makes The Story of Alice so compelling… [A] magnificent book.

An eager, zestful book that is hard to define. With perceptive delicacy [Douglas-Fairhurst] mixes the outwardly staid factual biography of Dodgson with the weird emotional development of Carroll. He writes with lightly worn authority about Victorian literature. He excavates some unlikely sources submerged in Alice in Wonderland. He unpicks and interprets Carroll’s ideas and techniques in his two pendant works for ‘child-friends’—Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) and the richly inventive poem The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits (1876)… Douglas-Fairhurst is fascinating on the afterlife of Alice Liddell… The Story of Alice is a pantechnicon of a book neatly loaded with good things.

Scholarly, playful and richly entertaining… [Douglas-Fairhurst’s] literary insights are—as you might expect of an Oxford professor of English—illuminating (he links the sighing expiration of the gnat in Looking-Glass to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline). His knowledge of subjects such as Victorian theatre, children’s books, photography, inventiveness, seaside holidays and the cult of prepubescent girls is compendious but lightly worn. On the tricky subject of Carroll’s sexuality he is bracingly sensible.

Douglas-Fairhurst [has] precision and liveliness as a narrator. He is constantly surprising and often shocking, quietly and carefully. The Story of Alice is splendidly interesting about the world in which the Alice books were written… Douglas-Fairhurst is a startling and exciting writer… [The Alice books] are eventually books for solitary, surprised children. How did [Carroll] do that? This book helps us to see, even while unraveling our innocence.

Remarkable… [Douglas-Fairhurst] casts a wide net, brilliantly bringing together the stories of Carroll, Alice Liddell and the Alice phenomenon itself to provide the most nuanced and convincing picture yet of Wonderland’s quirky, self-effacing creator… Thanks to The Story of Alice, we have not merely ‘The Secret History of Wonderland’ that its subtitle promises, but also a secret history of our virtual age.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland turns 150 this year, and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst...has written a timely book about both its author and its putative real-life subject, Alice Liddell. The Story of Alice is a fascinating, unsettling read, giving us a clear-eyed view both of Liddell's ambivalence about her fictional counterpart and of Dodgson's preoccupation with young girls.--Lev Grossman "Time" (6/8/2015 12:00:00 AM)

The Story of Alice is much more than its coy title. It is the story of several Alices... Above all it is the story of Lewis Carroll, fastidious, surpassingly eccentric, perhaps even a trifle addlepated and certainly persnickety.--Brian Sewell "The Independent" (4/12/2015 12:00:00 AM)

The Story of Alice is the best book on the myriad enigmas of Carroll's heart-breaking wonderland I have ever read.--Robert McCrum "The Observer" (3/22/2015 12:00:00 AM)

[A] masterful biography.--Anne Cunningham "Irish Independent" (4/11/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Alice's sesquicentennial--how Lewis Carroll would have loved that word--will be marked globally by events large and small... And there will be books, of course... Few are liable to be as compulsively readable as Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's The Story of Alice. [It] is informative on what went into the making of Wonderland, from the Victorians' intense focus on the underground--both literal (the tube) and fantastic (Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth)--to Carroll's anxiety about rapid change (like the Red Queen, he always thought he had to run faster and faster, just to stay where he was). And it's brilliant in the way it mirrors Carroll's own protean nature, offering no overarching theme, except to establish that its subject was not a man to provide two possible meanings for all he did and said, not so long as he could stuff in three or more.--Brian Bethune "Maclean's" (6/1/2015 12:00:00 AM)

An eager, zestful book that is hard to define. With perceptive delicacy [Douglas-Fairhurst] mixes the outwardly staid factual biography of Dodgson with the weird emotional development of Carroll. He writes with lightly worn authority about Victorian literature. He excavates some unlikely sources submerged in Alice in Wonderland. He unpicks and interprets Carroll's ideas and techniques in his two pendant works for 'child-friends'--Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) and the richly inventive poem The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits (1876)... Douglas-Fairhurst is fascinating on the afterlife of Alice Liddell... The Story of Alice is a pantechnicon of a book neatly loaded with good things.--Richard Davenport-Hines "Sunday Times" (3/22/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Anyone who loves the Alice books will here find new reasons to love them.--Rob Hardy "Columbus Dispatch" (6/11/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Douglas-Fairhurst offers readers a glimpse behind the curtain--the story of Lewis Caroll's Alice is told through the account of her creator's life (1832-98). This biographical approach delivers a unique perspective not only on the character but also on Carroll... The backstory of Alice in Wonderland is almost as enchanting as the tale Carroll wrote, and Douglas-Fairhurst skillfully presents it here. [An] engaging work.--Keri Youngstrand "Library Journal" (6/1/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Douglas-Fairhurst [has] precision and liveliness as a narrator. He is constantly surprising and often shocking, quietly and carefully. The Story of Alice is splendidly interesting about the world in which the Alice books were written... Douglas-Fairhurst is a startling and exciting writer... [The Alice books] are eventually books for solitary, surprised children. How did [Carroll] do that? This book helps us to see, even while unraveling our innocence.--A. S. Byatt "The Spectator" (3/28/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Douglas-Fairhurst's The Story of Alice belongs with the best books ever written in the field of Carrollian studies... For a total work of criticism, a scholarly Gesamtkunstwerk, The Story of Alice can't be beat. In it, Douglas-Fairhurst examines the tangled lives of Carroll and Alice Liddell (later Alice Hargreaves) up until the latter's death in 1934, while also tracking the publication history of the 'Alice' books, their popularity and their ongoing cultural influence. The Oxford don's own prose is, moreover, a delight to read: fact-filled, nicely balanced between exposition and quotation, confiding and witty. In fact, high among the pleasures of The Story of Alice is its willingness to amuse as well as instruct.--Michael Dirda "Washington Post" (6/11/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Few have been more thorough than Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in studying Carroll's nature and the principal object of his affections, Alice Liddell... Even though the creation of the books has been well-documented, it's the shifting social and historical context that makes The Story of Alice so compelling... [A] magnificent book.--Charlotte Heathcote "Sunday Express" (3/29/2015 12:00:00 AM)

In this enormously entertaining and thoughtful new book, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst pens a kind of triple portrait of Carroll, his fictional Alice, and Alice Liddell, the books' inspiration and first audience... Where The Story of Alice is at its richest and most rewarding is when Douglas-Fairhurst unspools the story of the fictional Alice, 'a heroine with a thousand faces, ' whose adventures changed how readers understood children's books forever.--Kate Tuttle "Boston Globe" (6/21/2015 12:00:00 AM)

More than a biography of Lewis Carroll... It is also the story of the books themselves, their inspiration, their writing, and their impact on the worlds of literature and popular culture... Will be catnip for serious Carroll enthusiasts and academics.--Michael Cart "Booklist" (5/1/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Offer[s] a thoughtful, far-reaching narrative, the story of three very different lives: those of Lewis Carroll, Alice Hargreaves, née Liddell, and the literary creation they both had a part in... Douglas-Fairhurst's ability to make room for...doubts without giving in to them is one of his book's great attractions.--Michael Wood "New York Times Book Review" (6/14/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Remarkable... [Douglas-Fairhurst] casts a wide net, brilliantly bringing together the stories of Carroll, Alice Liddell and the Alice phenomenon itself to provide the most nuanced and convincing picture yet of Wonderland's quirky, self-effacing creator... Thanks to The Story of Alice, we have not merely 'The Secret History of Wonderland' that its subtitle promises, but also a secret history of our virtual age.--Michael Saler "Wall Street Journal" (6/6/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's Becoming Dickens was one of the best literary biographies ever written about Dickens. This is no less fascinating, incisive, elegantly written and insightful... Douglas-Fairhurst has produced a work of a literary sensibility perfectly attuned to Carroll's, yet intellectually discrete from it.--Amanda Craig "The Independent" (3/28/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Scholarly, playful and richly entertaining... [Douglas-Fairhurst's] literary insights are--as you might expect of an Oxford professor of English--illuminating (he links the sighing expiration of the gnat in Looking-Glass to Shakespeare's Cymbeline). His knowledge of subjects such as Victorian theatre, children's books, photography, inventiveness, seaside holidays and the cult of prepubescent girls is compendious but lightly worn. On the tricky subject of Carroll's sexuality he is bracingly sensible.--Jane Shilling "London Evening Standard" (4/2/2015 12:00:00 AM)

Shot through with energy and ideas... The Story of Alice takes us, full throttle, back to the unalloyed passion of reading. This is what it is like to open a book, and to wonder.--Frances Wilson "Daily Telegraph" (4/4/2015 12:00:00 AM)

The author is in his element as Carroll's greatest fan. Readers will rush to their childhood copies of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass to reread them.-- "Kirkus Reviews" (3/15/2015 12:00:00 AM)

The latest entrant to the Carrollian maze is Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, who has written The Story of Alice. As someone who teaches English at Magdalen College, Oxford, he is nicely positioned for the task--a stroll away from Christ Church, the college where the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson taught mathematics, and the longtime residence of Lewis Carroll, who was almost, but not quite, the same person. The pair of them tussled, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.--Anthony Lane "New Yorker" (6/8/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"[C]atnip for serious Carroll enthusiasts and academics." —Booklist

Praise for Becoming Dickens:

[A] revealing and groundbreaking study.

Praise for Becoming Dickens:

Douglas-Fairhurst has a gift for apt and surprising description.

06/01/2015
Douglas-Fairhurst (English literature, Magdalen Coll., Univ. of Oxford; Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist) offers readers a glimpse behind the curtain—the story of Lewis Caroll's Alice is told through the account of her creator's life (1832–98). This biographical approach delivers a unique perspective not only on the character but also on Carroll. The making of Alice in Wonderland had an enormous effect on its author as well as the literature of the period. Douglas-Fairhurst places Carroll, née Charles Dodgson, firmly in his own age, a decision that helps to explain some of Dodgson's more controversial-seeming behaviors, such as photographing nude children. Elucidating that Dodgson wasn't alone in his actions either justifies his deeds or allows him to share the guilt. Douglas-Fairhurst details these events in a lighthearted, almost mocking tone that leaves the reader wondering about the culture of the Victorian Age. VERDICT The backstory of Alice in Wonderland is almost as enchanting as the tale Carroll wrote, and Douglas-Fairhurst skillfully presents it here. This engaging work will interest readers who enjoy literary history.—Keri Youngstrand, Dickinson State Univ. Lib., ND

Author Douglas-Fairhurst explores the lives of Charles Dodgson, a.k.a. Lewis Carroll, and Alice Liddell, the inspiration for ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. Narrator Shaun Grindell’s most important achievement is preventing the author’s meticulous academic details from weighing down the listener. Grindell’s energetic pacing keeps it all moving along, and he changes tone and emphasis to good effect. He employs an edge of wonder for the literary wordplay of Alice’s fictional world, a thoughtful tone for the discussion of Dodgson’s sentimental rather than sexual feeling for young girls, and carefully articulated diction for the middle-aged Dodgson himself as he fusses over the amount of bread and butter or cake in the Common Room. A.B. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

2015-03-03
Douglas-Fairhurst (English Literature/Magdalen Coll., Oxford; Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist, 2011, etc.) delivers a biography of Charles Dodgson (1832-1898), aka Lewis Carroll, that might be better described as a sociological study of Victorian England. As a stammering child who was first educated at home, Carroll developed his imagination inventing games for his siblings. Teaching mathematics at Christ Church in Oxford, he made friends with the daughters of the dean, and their friendship fed his creative fantasies and poetic missives. On a picnic in 1862, Carroll told them the story of a little girl's adventures in the underworld. He was closest to Alice Liddell, who pestered him to write it out for her. He published the work in 1865, although his relationship with the dean's children was suddenly curtailed, for no discernible reason. Carroll's fascination with the newly emerging science of photography fed his imagination. He enjoyed young girls' company, apparently with parental approval, and they posed for him in costume, and sometimes without. After a misplaced kiss, an angry mother put an end to his photography. Douglas-Fairhurst treats his subject's lifelong obsession with young girls, particularly those named Alice, as curious but in no way threatening. When he sticks to the joys of Carroll's Wonderland books and John Tenniel's enhancing illustrations, the subtlety of the lessons, the wonderful puns and word generation, the author is in his element as Carroll's greatest fan. Readers will rush to their childhood copies of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass to reread them. As Victorian society changed, Alice's influence grew, but Douglas-Fairhurst devotes too much space to it, even down to minute mentions, borrowed lines, allusions to, retellings of, satires, adaptations, copies, and Wonderlands anew everywhere. The magic of the work is well-served here but with just a bit too much extraneous information.