"This handsome four-volume Lewis Carroll library brings together major modern works devoted to the life, photography and literary achievement of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known throughout the world as Lewis Carroll. Rather than concentrating solely upon Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the collection explores the remarkably varied man behind the books: Oxford mathematician and don, pioneering Victorian photographer, diarist, correspondent and creator of some of the most enduring imaginative literature of the nineteenth century.
The biographical foundation is provided by two substantial studies. Morton N. Cohen's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (Macmillan, 1995 First Edition) draws upon decades of Carroll scholarship and access to Dodgson family material to examine the often enigmatic relationship between the private Victorian clergyman and the extraordinarily inventive author. Donald Thomas's Lewis Carroll: A Portrait With Background (John Murray, 1996 First Edition) places Dodgson more particularly within the social and intellectual world of Victorian Britain, examining his Oxford life, interests, friendships, photography and the historical environment from which the Alice books and The Hunting of the Snark emerged.
Of particular importance is Edward Wakeling's imposing The Photographs of Lewis Carroll: A Catalogue Raisonné, published by the University of Texas Press in 2015 First Edition. A major scholarly reference work, it documents Carroll's remarkable photographic career between 1856 and 1880 and reproduces nearly one thousand surviving photographs, including examples from private collections. Carroll produced approximately 3,000 photographs during his lifetime, encompassing portraits of family and friends as well as such notable Victorians as Alfred Tennyson, Michael Faraday, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti and Ellen Terry. Wakeling's catalogue provides information concerning subjects, dates and locations and reconstructs Carroll's lost photographic register, making this an especially substantial component of the collection.
Completing the library is the beautifully produced 2006 W.W. Norton Definitive Edition of The Annotated Hunting of the Snark, presenting Carroll's celebrated 1876 nonsense epic with the original illustrations of Henry Holiday, extensive annotations by noted Carroll authority Martin Gardner and an introduction by Adam Gopnik. The volume includes additional commentary, bibliography and material illuminating the literary, linguistic and mathematical puzzles embedded throughout Carroll's extraordinary poem. Together these four substantial hardcover volumes form an excellent Lewis Carroll reference and biographical library, and importantly all four retain their original unclipped dustjackets, presenting particularly well as a collected group."
