Rating: 
Summary: fascinating !
Review: This gives a new insight into the myth that has grown up around Lewis Carroll. I don't agree with Leach's hypothesis (that he was in love with Alice's mother) but her book is well researched and shows that there is much more to Carroll than meets the eye. It is refreshing to have someone treat him like a flesh and blood human being, albeit an unusual and quirky one. You quite wish you had known him
Rating: 
Summary: Shadows Foreshortened
Review: Though comparatively slight, and not strictly speaking a biography (more a thesis), it can justifiably be claimed that Ms Leach's book should take its place as one of the two most important published accounts of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson yet produced.Adopting a satisfyingly rigorous approach to its subject matter, which is predominently (though not exclusively) an examination of Lewis Carroll's sexuality, 'In the Shadow of the Dreamchild' systematically debunks the nastiest of all Carroll myths - that Carroll was sexually attracted to pre-pubescent girls. In the process, the author also successfully challenges a number of other Carroll myths and provides an irresistable case for a complete biographical revision of one of Victorian England's most fascinating figures. In effect Ms Leach does for Lewis Carroll what Horace Walpole achieved for Richard III (Walpole, as most professional historians, though few others, know, showed that Richard III almost certainly was not responsible for one of history's most heinous crimes, the murder of 'the princes in the Tower'). One hopes that having achieved this, Ms Leach is not to be ignored (as was Walpole) by posterity. Fortunately Ms leach has access to a rather more efficient media than did Walpole. Using her access to the surviving Lewis Carroll Journals, published and unpublished letters, much original research and, above all, a keen understanding of Victorian mores and the complex nature of Victorian theological, political and social issues, Leach provides the reader with an insight into a supremely healthy (in the broad sense of this term) and intelligent person who, though complex, is in no way the paradoxical figure previously portrayed. She also provides us with a person who one can believe actually wrote the Alice Books, Hunting of the Snark and myriad other works without having to reduce those works to dark sexual metaphors. In so doing she has opened the Carroll Canon to serious mainstream literary examination and, hopefully, acceptance. One does not have to wholeheartedly accept Ms Leach's own conclusions, to recognise the importance of this work - though the reader is advised to treat everything Ms Leach writes with respect. The only note of caution regarding this work relates to the modesty of its primary aim. This was to show, by the simple device of checking freely available data, that by far the majority of Carroll's so-called 'child-friends' were actually mature women. It may have been helpful if Ms leach had been rather less modest in her ambition and placed more emphasis in demonstrating that, far from being socially inept and reclusive in regard to male companionship, Carroll was little different in this respect to others of his social class, circumstances and historical period. That he numbered among his friends many of the most notable names of the day has not been sufficiently noted - though Morton Cohen in his oddly discrepant biography does goes some way to correct this particular Carrolian myth. This book could well be seen, not as has been prematurely (and wrongly) claimed of Cohen's work, as the 'definitive Carroll' but the beginning of true Carroll scholarship. Dr John Tufail
Rating:
Summary: Shadows Foreshortened
Review: Though comparatively slight, and not strictly speaking a biography (more a thesis), it can justifiably be claimed that Ms Leach's book should take its place as one of the two most important published accounts of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson yet produced. Adopting a satisfyingly rigorous approach to its subject matter, which is predominently (though not exclusively) an examination of Lewis Carroll's sexuality, 'In the Shadow of the Dreamchild' systematically debunks the nastiest of all Carroll myths - that Carroll was sexually attracted to pre-pubescent girls. In the process, the author also successfully challenges a number of other Carroll myths and provides an irresistable case for a complete biographical revision of one of Victorian England's most fascinating figures. In effect Ms Leach does for Lewis Carroll what Horace Walpole achieved for Richard III (Walpole, as most professional historians, though few others, know, showed that Richard III almost certainly was not responsible for one of history's most heinous crimes, the murder of 'the princes in the Tower'). One hopes that having achieved this, Ms Leach is not to be ignored (as was Walpole) by posterity. Fortunately Ms leach has access to a rather more efficient media than did Walpole. Using her access to the surviving Lewis Carroll Journals, published and unpublished letters, much original research and, above all, a keen understanding of Victorian mores and the complex nature of Victorian theological, political and social issues, Leach provides the reader with an insight into a supremely healthy (in the broad sense of this term) and intelligent person who, though complex, is in no way the paradoxical figure previously portrayed. She also provides us with a person who one can believe actually wrote the Alice Books, Hunting of the Snark and myriad other works without having to reduce those works to dark sexual metaphors. In so doing she has opened the Carroll Canon to serious mainstream literary examination and, hopefully, acceptance. One does not have to wholeheartedly accept Ms Leach's own conclusions, to recognise the importance of this work - though the reader is advised to treat everything Ms Leach writes with respect. The only note of caution regarding this work relates to the modesty of its primary aim. This was to show, by the simple device of checking freely available data, that by far the majority of Carroll's so-called 'child-friends' were actually mature women. It may have been helpful if Ms leach had been rather less modest in her ambition and placed more emphasis in demonstrating that, far from being socially inept and reclusive in regard to male companionship, Carroll was little different in this respect to others of his social class, circumstances and historical period. That he numbered among his friends many of the most notable names of the day has not been sufficiently noted - though Morton Cohen in his oddly discrepant biography does goes some way to correct this particular Carrolian myth. This book could well be seen, not as has been prematurely (and wrongly) claimed of Cohen's work, as the 'definitive Carroll' but the beginning of true Carroll scholarship. Dr John Tufail
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