SOURCE: Polhemus, Robert M. “Lewis Carroll and the Child in Victorian Fiction.” In The Columbia History of the British Novel, edited by John Richetti, pp. 579-607. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Polhemus explores Carroll's representation of children, suggesting that the idea of using children as subjects in fiction was just emerging when the Alice books were published.

What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning?

Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll's two books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), regarded when they were first published as amusing pieces in the developing subgenre of “children's books,” turned out to be major works of nineteenth-century literature and part of the history of serious imaginative writing. Carroll's words and images created art so radical and variously appealing that it could, did, and does bring many kinds of...