AUTHOR:

Anne Clark

Clark's biography was the first serious study to be written after Carroll's family finally released his papers, including his full manuscript diaries. This was the first biography to reveal the existence of the missing pages in those diaries (though she only reported one of the seven), and the first to acknowledge some of Carroll's friendships with adult women. But even so,the basic story she was telling had changed very little from the one passed down to her by Hudson, via Green, Taylor et al. Even though the evidence was now available, it never seems to have occurred to her to question anything she'd read in the earlier books, and indeed, like her predecessors she tended to invent or imagine 'facts' freely in support of the 'innocent pedo' image, for example claiming Carroll went on for years dedicating the "fruits of his labours" to Alice Liddell ("her and her alone"), even though he didn't, as the facts would easily have shown her had she cared to look.

SOUNDBITE:

All roads lead to Alice Liddell...even if they don't

IMPACT AND INFLUENCE:

Highly influential. Clark's vision of Alice Liddell as a unique love object in Dodgson's life (which she received from Taylor who of course had no evidence for it), is much quoted today and indeed featured as a source in Morton Cohen's recent claimed 'definitive' study.

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