THE BOOK

Lewis Carroll was the J K Rowling of his day, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland remains one of the most quoted books in the world, along with the Bible and Shakespeare. But his life-story as told in the biographies has become more myth than fact.

When the book In the Shadow of the Dreamchild first appeared in 1999 it created a furore by showing that many of the most famous aspects of Carroll - including his assumed passion for Alice Liddell and his infamous 'obsession' with pre-pubescent girls, were simply not true; that they had been created by the imaginings and inventions of the biographers themselves, and that this massive 'Myth' had grown to conceal the real and complex reality of the man's existence.

The response to the book was polarised and powerful. It was described as 'dangerous', and one elderly churchman even demanded it should be burned. Respected authorities like Donald Rackin wrote denunciations that wildy misrepresented the book's content and made claims for it that Leach herself had never made. Lewis Carroll's own family even tried to prevent the book being published and took the extraordinary step of denouncing it in the pages of The Lewis Carroll Review.

As the Lewis Carroll Review put it - "Carroll studies can never be quite the same again".

Despite the hysteria, in the nine years since it first appeared In The Shadow of the Dreamchild has become an important reference work for Carroll scholars and fans, and it has helped transform our image of Lewis Carroll from lonely deviant to mature and complex human being. - Now it is out in a new paperback edition, revised and extended. You can read the detailed story of how the various biographers's obsessions, fantasies and failures combined accident and design to create the mirage of 'Carroll'.

It is essential reading for anyone interested in Lewis Carroll's life and work.