The Pamphlets of Lewis Carroll: The Oxford Pamphlets, Leaflets, and Circulars of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Edward Wakeling, co (v. 1) [Hardcover]

Lewis Carroll (Author), Francine Abeles (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This collection of writings by Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass , highlights the intellectual virtuosity of the eccentric Oxford don. With an abundance of creativity and wit, he argues about such mundane subjects as the management of the college wine cellar; architectural alterations to Christ Church, Oxford; and the rotation of the university proctors, occasionally even reducing the controversies to mathematical formulas. These pamphlets, brought together for the first time with scholarly annotations, offer an important addition to Dodgson scholarship, for they show the Victorian writer at his most creative and reveal the wide range of his interests. However, except for a very specialized audience, the book has a limited appeal.
- Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 382 pages
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press (March 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813912504
• ISBN-13: 978-0813912509
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,272,189 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Getting even deeper into Lewis Carroll, March 14, 2002

By 

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

This review is from: The Pamphlets of Lewis Carroll: The Oxford Pamphlets, Leaflets, and Circulars of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Edward Wakeling, co (v. 1) (Hardcover)

This is certainly not a book for the casual Lewis Carroll fan, but a book for the hard-core, already-own-the-complete-letters-and-diaries kind of fan. It's a fascinating look at Dodgson's Oxford writings, including many previously unseen by the public.

Charles Dodgson's Oxford writings are full of items that the average person, having not been to Oxford in the 1800's, might despair to understand, if it were not for the helpful explanations supplied by the editors of this collection. These explanations make these writings accessable, allowing us to explore a microcosm of collegiate life. Dodgson expresses massive displeasure with the architectural and staff changes going on at the college, often with satire so biting that you wonder how many friends he must have lost with these little publications.

There are also a couple more serious papers about doings at the college, followed by a tremendous amount of circulars about the common room at the college, which Dodgson was curator of. These circulars are very dry, sometimes amounting to no more than lists of wines in the cellars. These papers take up almost half the book, and present a problem: Surely every Lewis Carroll fan wants a complete collection of his writings, but is this simply too much? However, if they weren't included, the readers would be left wondering if there was anything worthwhile in these papers, and the answer is that yes, about 5% of these papers are worth reading.

Once again, this book is for the truly hard-core Carroll nut. If you enjoyed all the writings in, say, the Modern Library "Works of" Lewis Carroll, then you might enjoy this. But it is not for casual fans, especially at the gold-plated price of [money].