INVENTING WONDERLAND: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne

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About INVENTING WONDERLAND: The Lives And Fantasies Of

Product Description 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. From Publishers Weekly In creating Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, girl-obsessed loner Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) achieved a breakthrough in children's literature, a work unparalleled in its freedom of thought and spirit, observes Wullschlager. In her judgment, Edward Lear's fantastical poems celebrate his escape from Victorian narrow-mindedness but also hint at a sense of alienation heightened by his secret homosexuality. Peter Pan?the naughty boy who refuses to grow up?mirrors his creator, James M. Barrie, an "emotional outsider" who idealized his mother, was unable to relate to his wife and compulsively played with other people's children. Frustrated banker Kenneth Grahame poured into The Wind in the Willows his disappointments, fears and hopes, partly reflecting his inability to accept his disabled, semi-blind son Alastair, who committed suicide at 19. For Financial Times feature writer Wullschlager, A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh series crystallizes the 1920s' desire for escape, light-headedness and nostalgia. A joy to read, the author's delightfully illustrated study revises our understanding of children's literature as a cultural barometer mirroring adult anxieties and aspirations. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.