Inventing Wonderland: the Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne

by Jackie Wullschlager

Between 1865 and 1930, five writers who could not grow up transformed their longing for childhood into a literary revolution. Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A. A. Milne stand at the center of a golden age of Victorian and early twentieth-century children's literature. From the vibrantly imagined stories of Alice in Wonderland to the enchanted, magical worlds of Peter Pan and Winnie-the-Pooh, these five writers made the realms of fantasy they envisioned an enduring part of our everyday culture. We return to these classics again and again, for enjoyment as children and for the consolation and humor they offer adults.
In Inventing Wonderland, Jackie Wullschlager explores the lives behind the fantasies of these remarkable writers as well as the cultural and social forces which helped shape their visions. As Wullschlager shows, each writer was not only childlike, but also born into a society which made a cult of childhood. In another age, their interests might have made them minor talents, but in Victorian and Edwardian England, they were mainstream writers in touch with the mood of a nation, working with the unconscious force of a whole society behind them.
In this captivating, richly illustrated multiple biography, Jackie Wullschlager draws on the letters, memoirs, and diaries of these five writers and reveals how their fixations with childhood had much to do with adult fears, self-doubts, and nostalgia in a changing society.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Books About Books, Biography Memoir, Literature, Criticism, Childrens

228 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Eleanor Toland · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this as research for my Master's Degree in English Literature and found it a great disappointment. The book is riddled with inaccurancies. E. Nesbit's name is consistently mispelled as E.E. Nesbit, Pan the Faun God of the Ancient Greeks, is called a 'Centaur' several times, the ending of the book of 'A Little Princess' is confused with the film of the same name, despite the author supposedly being educated at Oxford. I think the most baffling part was her statement that no great children's fiction has been written after Winnie-the-Pooh, which is so clearly untrue it hardly needs to be discussed. Also, this woman seems to have a truly sordid obsession with child molestation. I can't imagine why Lolita and Humbert Humbert were mentioned so many times in a book supposedly about Victorian and Edwardian children's writers. All in all, one to avoid for anyone wanting a deeper discussion of these authors, though it's OK if you just want potted biographies filled with sleazy innuendo about paedophilia. Oh, did I mention she said Edward Lear's drawings of big noses were phallic? Yeah...

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at the genesis of children's fantasy literature through the lives of 5 seminal authors. Examines the social and sexual repressions that shaped each writer and the world he created. I am interested to read other biographies about these men, to see what a biographer with an entirely different agenda makes of the same letters, etc. It seems clear to me which works the author read as a child, and which were read later - she is dismissive of newer, 'upstart' fantasy worlds like Narnia (citing the ham-handed use of Christian symbolism). However, many adults read the Narnia stories as secular tales and loved them on their own merits, unaware until much later of the blatant religious overtones. Additionally, she disregards fantasy worlds conceived originally for adults but adopted by older children (like Anne McCaffrey's Pern books)- though these concepts fall largely outside the scope of this book.

Overall, I found the book interesting, and agree with the biographer's suppositions. However, I felt that her preference for certain works was marked, as was her assumption that the five major works chronicled were nursery reading for all of us.

[Skye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can not help loving this, for the Gentlemen's lives it contains, all of whom were replacement Grandfathers and Father Christmases to me, telling me bed time stories and giving me sweets, a link with the pre-war past where I belonged so much more than here. I love them all.

Yet I don't think Ms Wullschlager and I would get on very well, having greatly different opinions and ways of understanding these works. I'd much rather read C.S. Lewis's thoughts on these Masters, as he knew how to read a book as both an adult and a child at once and double the pleasure.

'The progression shows how the fantasy worlds of children's books gradually came closer to reality, until eventually the inventiveness of English children's literature ran out.'

Just two years after this book was published, Ms Rowling proved just how wrong this author's premise was.

[treva · Rating 3 out of 5]

This serves as an interesting introduction to the biographies and historical/cultural contexts of each author, but I think longer works devoted to each author specifically would yield more valuable insight. I'm eternally weary of Freudian-style analysis, and I do find it odd that she referenced Nabokov and Salinger more than once, but L. Frank Baum -- a genuine contemporary in era, genre, and enthusiasm for children -- never. I get that he's American and she was focusing on England, but it still seems a gross oversight.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was far more gripping than a non-fiction book has any right to be. I actually stayed up late to finish it. Still not sure I buy that nothing happened between Barrie and Carroll and the objects of their respective obsessions, but that's just me. All in all, if -- like me -- you are fascinated by children's literature and Victorian literature, this is the book for you.

[Kasper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book at an impressionable age is probably what warped my mind into the psychoanalytic critic it is today. Whoops. I have very fond memories of this book, but I was also like 14 when I read it -- no idea at all of its actual literary or critical value. I do remember it wrecking every romantic illusion I ever held about J.M. Barrie. Adding this to the reread shelf, for sure.

[JD Shaffer · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I ordered this book, I was excited to see a cross comparison of some of my favorite authors and their works. However, my excitement soon turned to sore disappointment. Instead of a well-researched and well thought out look at the lives and work of these five men, instead I found a book filled with unproven accusations, suppositions about what the authors meant and thought and felt, and a large dose of amateur Freudian analysis. Here are just a few of the many unproven suppositions, taken randomly:

"Today, many children fine the Alice books frightening, confusing or just too difficult." (Page 55)

"It is hard not to see in Alice a comic, nonsense version of a Victorian Everyman, bewildered by change, tormented by religious doubt, terrified of an empty, godless cosmos." (Page 50)

"Sexual repression, a hint of child sexuality bubbling under the surface, is a driving force in Peter Pan." (Page 128)

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The entire book fills as if it began as a hypothesis and then relevant sources were searched to find evidence supporting the hypothesis. Each account of these men's lives is negative, focusing on negative influences or experiences and rarely including anything positive about them. Likewise, this book has a strong sexual orientation, focusing greatly on any actual or supposed sexual deviations. The author mentions pedophilia in every chapter and constantly refers to "Lolita".

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Even if one were to set aside the large number of unsupported accusations (well over 100, nearly one on every page), there are many passages and references in this book that makes the reader wonder if the author even READ the books in question. Examples:

"... but not once in the writing does he [Kenneth Grahame] mention parents." (Page 148).

Which is simply not true. Baby otter's DAD is out looking for him, Toad's father is mentioned several times, and the two little boys lost in the snow and found (and fed) by Badger talk about how mom made them go to school. And don't forget the gaoler'd daughter (thereby the gaoler is the father) and the daughter's grandmother...

"At the heart is Pooh, self-centered, affectionate, innocent, bewildered by adult life, obsessed with food, so greedy..." (Page 189)

"What draws both adults and children to the books [Pooh] is the ironic biting tone mixed in with the safe setting." (Page 189)

"He [Milne] invented characters who lie and cheat, who are fearful and ignorant, who are self-doubting and confused..." (Page 205)

And one more...

"In Grahame's 'The Wind in the Willows' (1908) a group of animals, much like boys, mess about in boats, picnic and party." (Page 28)

Which is just silly, as while they DO get in boats and picnic IN CHAPTER ONE, they never party. And they do a great deal more than simply that...

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With all of this in mind, I say, emphatically, avoid this book! It’s neither academic nor honest. There is nothing in it that will enlighten your understanding of these men and their work. I’m honestly shocked it ever saw print.

[Avril · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suspect some of the errors of the first edition have been corrected in this later one, and it does end with a new chapter that looks at later twentieth-century children's fantasy written by British authors, although there is a still a reference in the body of the book to the Winnie-the-Pooh stories by A. A. Milne being the last of the British children's fantasy books which I, as a reader of Lewis and Tolkien, found bizarre.

Wullschlager's connection between the Victorian and Edwardian worship of the child, the psycho-sexual development of the authors, and the books themselves, is interesting, and she doesn't make the mistake of reading paedophilia back into Carrol and Barrie's relationships with children. (Ruskin, on the other hand, seems much less innocent to me.) During the Freudian years of the twentieth century, when everything was about sex, there would have been no escape from such a reading; post-Freud we can acknowledge the possibility of asexuality, which seems to have been what Carrol and Barrie were.

The trouble is that having made the link between history, psycho-sexual development and writing fantasy for children, Wullschlager can't explain why fantasy has remained such a dominant mode in British fiction and the last chapter is confused. What makes sense for the five men (four and a half because Milne doesn't quite fit?) doesn't seem to make sense for later authors. Other books need to be written to explain this, and some of them have been written, looking at the impact of WW1 on writers like Lewis and Tolkien, for instance.

But, all up, I enjoyed this and it gave me new information about Lear, at least, if not much about the other authors.

[Stephen Hayes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating summmary of the development of children’s fantasy literature, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to the Harry Potter and His Dark Materials series.

The bulk of the book is devoted to the life and work of five authors who pioneered the genre: Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne.

There is an interlude that looks at some predecessors and some other contemporary late Victorian and Edwardian authors, such as E. Nesbit

[Sassafras Patterdale · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book - I wanted it to do more than it did, and i wasn't always sure I followed/agreed with the author's theories/analysis of the lives of some of these authors, and some of them were total creepers, but I did enjoy learning about the ones who kept rooms filled with toys for their own amusement :) particularly Kenneth Grahame who lived a child-like life into adulthood

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me entirely too long to finish this. It was an interesting exploration of Victorian children's authors, but has the misfortune to have been written just prior to the release of Harry Potter. The author makes a lot of absolute statements in the introduction and conclusion about how no author has created a world that has so impacted the imagination in children's literature since the authors she writes of: Carroll, Lear, Barrie, Grahame and Milne. She also makes no mention of American children's authors (L. Frank Baum comes to mind). It was a bit academic for my tastes as well, but I did enjoy the biographical aspects. Anyone who aspires to write a great children's novel inspired by a child he loves will think twice after reading this. If fame of the book didn't destroy the relationship (Carroll, Milne), it led to the tragically premature death of the child (Barrie, Grahame).

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this - really interesting insight into the lives of some of my favorite authors of my favorite books - very painful lives that translated into some of the world's best "escapist" literature. Curiouser and curiouser!

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is helping to map out the complex culture of late Victorians and those ranking innocence too highly.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another intriguing read - but it had some factual errors and it wasn't as in-depth as other books on the same subject. USeful to put Barrie in context of his contemporaries, though.

[Minna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some absolutely fascinating parts in here.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both high-handed AND gossipy, a perfect combination.

[Dulcie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 A disturbing but interesting read.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and well researched look into the lives of five most loved children's authors.