The Story of Alice: Lewis Carroll and the Secret History of Wonderland

It is hard to describe this book, because it is a combination of a biography of Lewis Carroll, a description of how the ‘Alice’ books came into being, and what happened to those books, the author and Alice Liddell afterwards.

This book mainly examines the friendship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell (the real Alice behind the story) and how their relationship influenced the creation of the famous ‘Wonderland’ tales. It also looks at the relationship of Carroll with his child-friends in general and how he wanted to preserve childhood, either in his relationships with children or through his ‘Alice’ books, as well as how the books were received and follow up by similar books.

The first part of the book deals with Carroll’s history ‘before Alice’ and is mainly biographical. The middle part is about their relationship, and the book ends with an ‘after Alice’ section. The second and third section deal with a lot of different aspects of the involved people and the ‘Alice’ books. In total there are 42(!) chapters and 488 pages with small letters, so there is a vast amount of information in it, although it is really hard to summarize.