2015-12

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150 Years Beautiful gifts made with love 5 Meadowhead, Woodseats, Sheffield S8 7UA 0114 327 4270 www.facebook.com/fallingmoongiftshop St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats Church Office: 9 Linden Avenue, Sheffield S8 0GA Tel: (0114) 274 5086 ► Gifts ► Jewellery ► Homeware ► Soft furnishing Page <strong>12</strong> In 1865 an Anglican cleric published a children’s book that would never go out of print, would inspire countless future books and films from Doctor Suess to The Matrix and would be adapted many times to theatre, animation and film - media that the young Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll, to you and me) could never have dreamed of. That book was of course Alice in Wonderland, followed up six years later by the less popular sequel Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there. The two Alice stories are remarkable works. Like all good children’s books they speak equally well to old and young, meaning that parents get pleasure from reading them for the first time to their children. Carroll’s imagination was unparalleled and his prose witty and simple without ever being condescending. The books were well served by the brilliant illustrator, John Tenneil, whose brilliant drawings ensured that, despite Walt Disney’s best efforts, Alice remains in our imagination as the young Victorian girl with a flowing locks and a billowing dress. The story behind Alice’s conception is well known. The dean of Christ Church, Lewis Carroll email: office@stchads.org website: www.stchads.org
of Wonderland One of the pictures from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Oxford, Henry Liddell, had a young family and became close friends with Carroll. Lewis Carroll would frequently go on rowing trips with them and tell engaging stories. One such trip took place on July 4,1862 when Carroll, perhaps noting the large number of rabbit holes where they sat, told a story of a white rabbit, a young girl and an amazing adventure underground. Alice Liddell was entranced by the story and begged Carroll to record it in writing. The rest, as they say, is history - or as Carroll would have probably preferred - fantasy. Lewis Carroll’s fecund imagination soon produced an array of unforgettable characters - the mad St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats Church Office: 9 Linden Avenue, Sheffield S8 0GA Tel: (0114) 274 5086 Page 13 hatter and his companions, the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire cat to name a few. Queen Victoria was reputedly a great fan (presumably not seeing the Queen of Hearts as in anyway based on the reigning monarch!) and Carroll’s name was made. Lewis Carroll himself remains a controversial character. He was, like so many Victorian churchmen, extremely intelligent and emotionally complex. He was a brilliant mathematician as well as a creative genius. He had a particular interest in early photography, from which the most controversial aspect (to modern eyes) derived: namely, his obsessive photographing of young girls. This has led the Alice books, as well as his other writings, to be read with some suspicion by modern literary critics. What are we to make of a man who, 150 years later, could have been arrested for some of the images that he took? It is rarely a helpful exercise to transport our minds into a culture and time so different to our own. The Victorians as a society were obsessed with children and innocence – hence the booming sales of Alice – and Carroll was by no means the only Victorian writer to spend more time with young children than we might expect today. Whatever the deeper readings that can be found in Alice, it seems to me that the best of way of reading the book is surely the way that Carroll intended it on that July riverside ramble. It is about magic, wonder and the possibilities that arise when you take your eyes off the day-today practicalities of life. As a far lesstalented Anglican cleric, I can only say that I wholeheartedly agree. Rev Toby Hole email: office@stchads.org website: www.stchads.org
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