Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: The Mystery of Lewis Carroll

The Mystery of Lewis Carrol by Jenny Woolf 2010

Many biographies have been written about Charles Dodgson, known to his readers by his pen name, Lewis Carroll. Biographer Jenny Woolf is able to bring to life this fascinating and often inexplicable man, who has given the world the well-
loved classic Alice in Wonderland. Using recently discovered sources, the author brings us a Carroll who was brilliant, secretive, a lover of puzzles and math games (after all he was an Oxford teacher of Math), and of course an imaginative writer. Woolf tackles many of the questions (some of them of a scandalous nature) about Carroll's life. Why did he have a falling out with the Alice Liddell's family? What were the romantic secrets in his life? And what caused his financial breakdown? I especially liked the way the author attempted to explain Carroll’s behavior in the context of the Victorian times in which he lived.