The real Alice

Alice Liddell was the original Alice in Wonderland, one of the family to whom a shy Oxford don wove his tale of a little girl going down a rabbit hole. That same don was an avid amateur photographer, and Simon Winchester's latest book talks about what may look to modern eyes as, at the very least, suggestive pictures. The photograph printed here '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.' More...