Who needs the Internet when this book is available?

I'm almost serious. If you want testimony about Charles Dodgson (Lewis Caroll) from his friends and colleagues, it's all here. Every significant source I can remember seeing quoted in any other text, other than of course his diaries and letters.

To be sure, not every page of every important life is included; there are only small sections of Isa Bowman's life of her friend, and Ethel Hatch's book of Letters has biographical material that isn't found here, and there are a few other odds and ends. But they are few, and generally less revealing. This is a relatively thin book, but then, Charles Dodgson never really opened himself up to others. We have very little knowledge of how he thought; we only know how he acted. And that is all in here.

The only reasons I didn't give this book five stars are that, first, Morton Cohen usually lists the authors of the various excerpts under the names they used when they published, or in later life (so, e.g., Enid Stevens, the very last of Dodgson's important child-friends, is listed as "Enid Shawyer" -- her married name but not one that will be familiar from the Dodgson biographies; Gertrude Chataway, his most significant friend after Alice Liddell, is "Gertrude Atkinson"; the only exception, and it partial, is that Alice herself is "Alice (Liddell) Hargreaves"). Second, I don't think the selections are given quite enough context; you need to consult a good biography before you can fully appreciate this book. But it is a collection that every student of Dodgson requires.

It won't replace a biography, or the collection of letters that Cohen himself edited, or Dodgson's diaries. But, along with the diaries and the letters and perhaps a volume on Dodgson's photography, this is one of the small shelf of necessary books that truly give insight into the strange, insecure, shy, badly misunderstood man who gave us Alice in Wonderland. ( )