Author: Robson, Catherine [1962- ]
Title: Men in Wonderland: The Lost Girlhood of the Victorian Gentlemen
Description: Princeton, Princeton University Press, (2001). orig.cloth. 24x16cm, xii,250 pp. Textual illustrations.. Minor rubbing. VG. ¶ Contents: Of Prisons and Ungrown Girls: Wordsworth, De Quincey, and Constructions of the Lost Self of Childhood; The Ideal Girl in Industrial England ; The Stones of Childhood: Ruskin's "Lost Jewels"; Lewis Carroll and the Little Girl: The Art of Self-Effacement; A "New 'Cry of the Children' ": Legislating Innocence in the 1880s; Appendix: Lewis Carroll's Letter to the St. James's Gazette, July 22, 1885. ["Men in Wonderland contributes to a growing interest in the nineteenth century's construction of childhood, sexuality, and masculinity, and illuminates their complex interconnections with a startlingly different light. Not only does it complicate the narratives of pedophilic desire that are generally used to explain figures like Ruskin and Carroll, but it offers a new understanding of the Victorian era's obsession with loss, its rampant sentimentality, and its intense valorization of the little girl at the expense of mature femininity...." - Publisher's description]

Keywords: Literary Criticism, English Literature, Victorian, Girls Girlhood, John Ruskin, Lewis Carrol, Gender Identity, Psychology, Sex Role Innocence