In the shadow of the dreamchild

"It has Long been believed that Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, was a man emotionally, and probably sexually, obsessed with female children and with his 'muse' Alice Liddell in particular. This new study makes the bold claim that this is not so." "Karoline Leach suggests that biography has fallen victim to a powerful Lewis Carroll mythology that has obscured the reality of the man's life. She has discovered hitherto unpublished evidence from the family archives and uses this, along with his letters and unpublished diaries, to reveal that Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the man behind the pseudonym, was far from 'the dreamer of children'." "The book tells the strange story of how the famous and fictitious 'Carroll' image grew in the popular imagination and scholarship and finds, beneath this, the forgotten reality of a charming and manipulative man who adored - and was adored by - females of all ages and who enjoyed unfettered relationships with women that sometimes brought him into conflict with his Victorian world. It explores areas of his life other biographers have largely ignored and - perhaps most controversially - suggests that the guilt which haunted his most creative years was caused not by a passion for the 'real' Alice but by a relationship with another member of her family."--Jacket.