Why a Booktrail?
1862: What happened before Alice fell down the rabbit hole?
The Looking Glass House
What you need to know before your trail
Oxford, 1862.
Mary Prickett goes to work as a governess to the daughters of the Dean of Christ Church. A strange job for a women who doesn’t really like children and seems to dislike the daughter of the house Alice Liddell even more.
Life improves when Mary meets Charles Dodgson, the Christ Church mathematics tutor, (and the man who will be known as Lewis Carroll). she’s flattered by his attentions and starts to see herself as more than just a governess. She wants to become his muse, his everything…
One day, Mary chaperones the Liddells on a punting trip, and Mr Dodgson starts to tell the story of a certain little girl who sees a white rabbit andn starts to follow him…..
Travel Guide
Vanessa Tait has the honour of being the great-granddaughter of the Alice who inspired Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This is the story of what happened before those tales in Wonderland took place through the eyes of the governess who looked after Alice and the other children.
In this looking glass, the governess Mary Prickett looks back and sees a dowdy old governess who wants and believes she deserves a better life.
Mary is a woman of her time – trapped in her station and circumstance and desperately trying to find a way out. Meeting Hodgson is a ticket out of her old life and into a new one. She dislikes Alice for she takes far too much attention away from Hodgson in her eyes. But that is only half the story..
Look closely into the looking glass and the image is a very very dark one indeed.
On the bright side of the mirror, the novel is a treasure trove of a trail through the characters, inspirations and settings which all ended up in the Alice and Wonderland story. A picture of Victorian England with all its eccentricities and religious constraints.
A journey through the mind of Lewis Carroll himself – is the Queen of Hearts and Queen Victoria one and the same?
Where Next?
