Agony of Lewis Carroll [Paperback]

Richard Wallace (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 298 pages
• Publisher: Gemini Pr; 1st edition (August 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962719552
• ISBN-13: 978-0962719554
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,209,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Avoid this book!, October 22, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Agony of Lewis Carroll (Paperback)

Richard Wallace has based his book upon the incredibly dubious principle that the secret to all of Lewis Carroll's inner demons can be found by searching for the most vile anagrams possible in his works. The anagrams are preposterous, the analysis pathetic, and you are left wondering why anybody would waste their time on such an enterprise. The ultimate injustice comes when Wallace actually removes eight letters from a fifty letter verse to make up an anagram that suits his needs! Nobody needs or deserves this book.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ridiculous, September 24, 2002

By 

J. Fristrom (www.gamedevblog.com) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Agony of Lewis Carroll (Paperback)

It turns out this book is about anagrams; it is not a deep exploration of Lewis Carroll's life. Supposedly, Charles Dodgson AKA Lewis Carroll used anagrams to encode homosexual messages into his work. A quick trip to anagramfun.com convinced me that one can find anagrams for anything in anything. I even found a clever one for the title of this work, which amazon.com won't let me print.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Oh really?, March 4, 2002

By 

Mark Pollock "educator" (Davis, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Agony of Lewis Carroll (Paperback)

The author of this book repeats over and over how he set a very strict rule of using all the letters in a phrase for constructing anagrams. Let us now turn to page 40, and I quote, "There are fifty letters in the verse aqnd with eight removed an anagram emerges which I believe represents a manifesto..."

The anagram is then used as one of the epigraphs of the book.

So what was that about a strict rule?

This book is simply filled with bizarre assumptions. The underlying assumption is that Lewis Carroll filled his poems and stories with a variety of anagrams that tell about his homosexuality, his lust for young children, his desire for dalliances with animals, his hate for his father, and on and on. Every incident in a story must mean something sordid. Every phrase must be turned into the most foul and vulgar anagram possible. I'm reminded of the Freud quote; "Somtimes a cigar is just a cigar." Mr. Wallave would have done well to heed this thought.

One possible anagram for this title:
ANGRY SELECTOR ILL OAF WHO
wrote this darn book.