Alice to the Lighthouse: Children's Books and Radical Experiments in Art

by Juliet Dusinberre

Alice to the Lighthouse is the first and only full-length study of the relation between children's literature and writing for adults. Lewis Carroll's Alice books created a revolution in writing for and about children which had repercussions not only for subsequent children's writers--Stevenson, Kipling, Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett and Mark Twain--but for Virginia Woolf and her generation. Virginia Woolf's celebration of writing as play rather than preaching is the twin of the Post-Impressionist art championed by Roger Fry. Juliet Dusinberre connects books for children in the late nineteenth century with developments in education and psychology, all of which feed into the modernism of the early 20th century.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Art

352 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1987

Reviews

[Ella · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating look in that it looks at how children’s books influenced modernist writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. The author argues that the playfulness and experimentation in stories like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland helped shape children literature. The book is packed with sharp insights and deep analysis, though the academic style can be a bit dry. Still, I recommend this book if you’re into literary history or how childhood reading shapes big literary movements. A very curiouser and curiouser read indeed!

[Sherah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting critique of Modernist adult literature and its relation to children's literature. The critique of 'children's literature' as an area of study was a bit thin.