Though he’s known now primarily as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in his lifetime Lewis Carroll was interested at least as much in photography as in writing. This book offers a close look at Carroll’s engagement with the medium, both as a creator and a collector of photographs. Lindsay Smith takes readers to the glass studio above Carroll’s college rooms at Oxford, where he created many of his striking portraits, and she also follows him into the field—on excursions to the theater in London, to the seaside at Eastbourne, and even to Russia. Smith also details Carroll’s enthusiastic work as a collector, in which role he arranged portrait sittings for photographers whose work he admired.

Beautifully illustrated with a generous selection of Carroll’s work and that of other photographers of the period, this book gives fans of Carroll’s writing a new way to understand his creative genius.