The Alice Behind Wonderland

Alice Liddell

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The Alice Behind Wonderland by Simon Winchester

Acres of print have been expended on Carroll's surrealism and Dodgson's sexuality, and here now is a very brief monograph by the prolific Simon Winchester. It is scarcely more than a clearing of the throat or an extended article between his big books on earthquakes and the Atlantic, focusing forensically on one photograph and one relationship: The collodion picture, taken in the garden of the deanery at Christ Church, at that time occupied by Alice's father, on a summer's day in , is perhaps the most notorious of the nine portraits Dodgson made of Alice alone over 13 years. It shows the six-year-old child, dressed as a beggar girl, leaning nonchalantly against a wall.

Considering how new and complicated the photographic process was, the picture taken by the year-old Dodgson is extraordinarily sharp and technically accomplished.

It required patience and steadiness from the little girl, too: You can interpret her expression as either sultry or — perhaps more credibly — bored and somewhat impatient. The picture is unsettling, the artifice too obvious: It would be another four years before Alice and her sisters, Dodgson and his friend Robinson Duckworth rowed up the Thames to Godstow on their famous picnic, listening to Dodgson's wonderland tale. Was this an extempore story, Duckworth asked.

The Alice Behind Wonderland

Three years later, the expanded story was published and has never since been out of print. But it is the photograph that fascinates Winchester, and in dissecting it, and the story of how it came to be produced, he questions some of the myths. Dodgson's photographs of children would have been seen differently by the sentimental Victorians as portraits of innocence.

Alice's siblings — also photographed that day — would have been present, as would, almost certainly, Alice's formidable mother Lorina, or at least her governess, Mary Prickett, any of whom could presumably have stopped anything inappropriate happening. The evidence is that the Liddell children doted on Dodgson, though Mrs Liddell eventually tired of the frequency with which he brought his Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding camera to the deanery garden.

As in most of his books, Winchester here excels at weaving in the small and incidental details of history and biography.

As he describes how Carroll picked up photography he goes so far as to analyze Carroll's choice of equipment -- and of the competing forms of 'photography' at the time. Winchester gives a brief history of the invention of the wet-plate collodion process which is what Carroll opted for , and the man behind it, Frederick Scott Archer -- who never even bothered to patent it, but whose "three otherwise destitute children" were admirably given a pension by the British Crown for what they recognized as his important contribution.

Similarly, Winchester begins his book with a description of the Princeton University Firestone Library's Parrish Room , and an entertaining digression about the great bibliophile collector M. Parrish and the grand Collection of Victorian Novelists he left the library -- which includes many Carroll photographs.

Only in the Acknowledgements does Winchester note that he never actually got to see the Parrish's original of the famous Alice picture, as the curator: Winchester offers a good overview of Carroll-as-photographer -- and notes that of some three thousand catalogued photographs by Carroll, a mere eleven are "solo portraits" of Alice Liddell.

His focus is, however, on the most famous one: Winchester is very good in describing what led up to the photograph -- from Carroll taking up photography to his getting to know the Liddells -- as well as then considering all the technical aspects to it, from the photography involved to what led up to the picture from costume changes to the mat underfoot.

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It's all done with a keen eye, and all quite interesting -- but Winchester does skirt around the more difficult issues of what Carroll and Alice were presenting here, and their relationship. Winchester embraces the idea that Carroll's: It is, arguably, a plausible reading -- but the alternatives would surely have deserved Winchester does not look at the photograph in isolation, but also discusses the evolution of Carroll's relationship with Alice as well as a bit of her later life , as well as the other photographs he took of her.

If a rather quick tour through a great deal of material, Winchester nevertheless manages to present an impressive amount, and to present it very well.

The Alice Behind Wonderland

Though only occasionally considering its varied subjects in greater depth, The Alice behind Wonderland is a rich little monograph, and certainly a very good introduction to the subject-matter.

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