Alice in Space: The Sideways Victorian World of Lewis Carroll by Gillian Beer (review)

A book of considerable erudition, Alice in Space is not so much about Carroll’s Alice books as about “some of the contexts within which the books first lived and which they sometimes altered.” Beer’s ultimate goal is to describe a culture, which she calls “mid-Victorian,” along with Carroll’s “habits of mind.” Engagement with the Alice books is presupposed and required, but the main point appears to be that of connecting them to a number of other books and authors. Some are well-known scientists, philosophers, and writers (Plato, Hume, Emily Brontë, Boole, Mill, Maxwell, and Darwin), whereas others are more obscure. Many of the traditional topics of contemporary Carroll scholarship are covered (mathematics, games, puns, dialogue, kinds, meaning, justice, and, not least, food). All are covered in similar ways. For each problem, sources are alleged and causal connections assumed in relation to those sources. Carroll shared an inclination toward nonsense with his father; Maxwell admired Carroll’s nonsense; Mill was not averse to the odd humorous description (though he shared few inclinations with his own father); Carroll was not averse to reading Mill; Mill read Plato when he was Alice’s age; Boole claimed that we are allowed to employ symbols “in whatever sense we please” (and so, famously, did Humpty Dumpty). The author’s admiration for Carroll is characteristically expressed in her book by a reduction of Carroll’s books to matters of mid-Victorian intellectual atmosphere, which is of course also a habit of mind (though not one of Carroll’s).