The Looking Glass House

Hello everyone, 

At the moment I am up to my eyes in revision, it’s all I think about, but this then makes me struggle to get to sleep. Whenever I have trouble switching off I like to read for 30 minutes or half an hour in bed. This week I read a book which I have been excited about reading for quite some time, The Looking Glass House by Vanessa Tait is a relatively new release and was much anticipated. 

For 150 years the world has been obsessed with Alice in Wonderland and all things Alice and Lewis Carroll. I think people often forget that Alice was a real little girl and that Lewis Carroll was a real grown man. In those days it wasn’t thought to be unusual for an adult male to spend time with young girls, girls would even become engaged as young as 14. Almost as soon as they could walk, their mothers would be planning their life, who could court them, who could not and who could eventually espouse their beloved daughters. 

Alice Liddell was just 4 years old when she first met Charles Dodgson, a maths lecturer in Oxford where her father was the Dean. Charles Dodgson was a close friend of the family for many many years before their sudden split. There has long been rumours surrounding this…was he having an affair with Mrs.Liddell? Was he courting her eldest daughter Lorina? Or, and this seems to be the most likely, was he simply too fond of 11 year old Alice? 

It certainly seems that Alice made a lasting impression on him, he wrote her countless letters, told her stories, took her photograph and even wrote two full books about her, which he later published under his well known nom de plume Lewis Carroll. Dodgson had many child-friends as he liked to call them and would nowadays be thought of as very questionable in his attitude towards children, it seems strange that his books became so well loved by the world, considering their dubious origin. 

Over the years countless writers have speculated about what really happened!  Using family stories, journals and letters Vanessa Tait, as Alice’s great granddaughter, has a better chance than most at getting to the truth. Her story is told from the point of view of Miss Prickett, known to the children as “Pricks”, who was the governess at the time. The main events, circumstances and the people were very real, but this view point is entirely new. Vanessa Tait simply filled out the story adding a bit of romance, intrigue and conflict in a similar way to Philipa Gregory. I guess you could almost call this historical fiction! 

I loved this book from start to finish, I like the underlying sinister edge, it keeps you on your toes and really makes you feel every word. It highlights how an act carried out in innocence can so easily be misinterpreted. Was Dodgson acting inappropriately or was he simply a man who had been cruelly treated as a child and thus revelled in the wonders of childhood innocence that he had so sadly lacked? I can’t wait to see what Vanessa Tait writes next! 

What do you guys think of the story behind Alice? Let me know in the comments below :-) 

xoxo