Lewis Carroll Study Day

Talks

The following talks are part of the programme:

Lewis Carroll at Surrey History Centre: an Introduction to the Archives (by Isabel Sullivan )
Lewis Carroll enjoyed a connection with Guildford and its environs for 30 years, and is buried there, in the Mount Cemetery. Both family and friends appreciated his link to the town and have entrusted their archives of Carroll to be kept locally. The Lewis Carroll collections now at Surrey History Centre are a focal point for the study of the man and his life.
This talk gives a brief history of the evolution of the collections and describes some of the strengths of our holdings.

Lewis Carroll, The Man and His Circle (by Edward Wakeling)
Drawing upon a lifetime’s study of the man and his work, Edward Wakeling will present a fresh approach based upon Lewis Carroll’s wide and varied social circle, based on the testimony of Carroll’s contemporaries, at the same time dispelling some of the key myths that surround this world famous author. Edward will also be selling and signing copies of his books.

Alice in 1932: Looking Back at the Lewis Carroll Centenary (by Will Brooker)
The 1932 centenary of Lewis Carroll’s birth marks a key point in the way the author and his work were discussed, interpreted and understood. By 1932, the Alice books had been adapted to cinema, adopted into advertising and incorporated into a society very different from the 1860s Britain in which they were first published. Carroll, who died in 1898, was already considered a literary ‘immortal’, and his work was associated with a nostalgic past, yet he also remained within living memory, recalled by people who had known him when they were children: while the ‘real Alice’, Mrs Hargreaves, was still alive, an elderly lady enjoying a new celebrity.
This paper, based on a study of hundreds of original documents from the period, examines what Lewis Carroll and Alice meant at the time, with a particular focus on Guildford’s literary heritage and Carroll’s importance to the area.

‘Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures and Victorian Children’s Literature’. (by Fran Kohlt)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a remarkable text which has endured as one of the world’s most popular children’s classics – but is it really a children’s book? Or perhaps much more than that?
In an exploration of how the genre of ‘children’s literature’ emerged in the 19th century, and what Victorians considered appropriate literature for the young, this talk will seek answers to this question in the kaleidoscopic landscape of Victorian Children’s Literature. In the light of the shifting concepts of what it meant to be a child in Victorian Britain, it will re-examine children’s classics from Dickens to Kingsley, in a journey through enchanted forests, dark alleyways of the metropolis and fantastic wonderlands, seen through the eyes of literary child heroes – and their creators.

Event details:

• Date and time: Saturday 7 November 2015, 10 am – 3.15 pm
• Location: Surrey History Centre, 130 Goldsworth Road, Woking, Surrey GU21 6ND, United Kingdom
• Price: £15
• Booking: book online or phone (01483 518737)
• Event website: http://www.surreycc.gov.uk/heritage-culture-and-recreation/archives-and-history/surrey-history-centre/heritage-events