Raynor carroll biography of michael lewis

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Lewis Carroll: a biography by Bakewell, Michael.

Common Knowledge. More Tags. How much did he know and when did he know it? That is the question that must always be asked about a biographer of Charles Dodgson Lewis Carroll , because so much of the information about his life was kept secret for so long. His photographic negatives and his personal letters were mostly destroyed. His diaries were kept secret for so long that four of thirteen volumes disappeared.

Michael Bakewell's biography of Lewis Carroll, written 20 years ago, is a very detailed, comprehensive account of the life of the enigmatic and very complex man who was .

When they were first published, they had been heavily abridged, and occasionally physically doctored, and the editor Roger Lancelyn Green was not allowed to see the originals. It wasn't until about a century after Dodgson's death that the diaries were truly given to the public. It took a long time to gather a decent collection of his letters, too. The sad show more effect of all this is that, although some of his child-friends lived until the s and even beyond that, we never had for instance a chance for the friends to respond to the diaries.

The result is that, until fairly recently, each new biography had a little more source information than the one before -- more testimonials, more letters, more diary entries -- and often created an entirely new Dodgson as a result. This book comes near but not at the end of the process: It has access to the Green editions of the diaries, and to photocopies of some additional parts, but not the final diary editions by Edward Wakeling.