Nom de Plume by Carmela Ciuraru Page B

repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.

He was obsessive-compulsive and collected books about fairies
    Chapter 4
    Lewis Carroll & CHARLES DODGSON
    A show of hands if you’ve never heard of Alice in Wonderland. That’s what I thought. You’d have to have fallen down a rabbit hole to be unfamiliar with Lewis Carroll’s 1865 masterpiece, which in the past hundred years has been adapted for television and film numerous times, including three silent films, a British musical, a pornographic movie, an animated Disney version, a Japanese anime TV series ( Fushigi no Kuni no Alice ), and in 2010, a 3-D blockbuster directed by Tim Burton. It has been turned into graphic novels, plays, and operas, and it was even appropriated as the title of an execrable album by Jewel ( Goodbye Alice in Wonderland ). It has been translated into 125 languages, including Yiddish, Swahili, and Pitjantjatjara, an Aboriginal language of Australia. It has influenced James Joyce and Jefferson Airplane. There have been Alice theme parks, mugs, teapots, soap dishes, chess sets, T-shirts, and tea towels. Aside from Shakespeare, and the Bible, it’s the most widely translated and quoted book of all time. Following the first edition illustrated by John Tenniel, subsequent versions have been accompanied by drawings from artists such as Arthur Rackham, Mervyn Peake, Ralph Steadman, and Salvador Dalí. Many woefully misguided authors have attempted sequels to Alice. Parodies have been published—some brilliant, some without merit. Vladimir Nabokov translated a Russian edition when he was just twenty-four years old. And through all its iterations, Alice has never been out of print.
    This classic story, perhaps the most-read children’s book in the world, has also been banned on at least a few occasions. In the early twentieth century, a high school in New Hampshire censored Alice in Wonderland owing to its “expletives, references to masturbation and sexual fantasies, and derogatory characterizations of teachers and of religious ceremonies.” (Fair enough.) And in 1931, China deemed it forbidden material because “animals should not use human language.”
    The author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (its original title) was Lewis Carroll, but that name was a hiding place. The eccentric Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a shy, eminent Oxford mathematician and lecturer, had created the nom de plume as a means of shelter from which he could let his imagination run wild. He wanted his “day job” to remain undisturbed and private. Reflecting his obsession with wordplay since childhood, the pseudonym was a clever transposition of his real name: “Lewis” was the anglicized form of Ludovicus (Latin for “Lutwidge”), and “Carroll” was an Irish surname similar to the Latin Carolus , from which the name “Charles” is derived.
    He was so mortified by publicity that he refused to acknowledge his alter ego. Whenever he was a guest in someone’s home, if the name “Lewis Carroll” arose in conversation, he would leave. Autograph hunters were turned away without exception.
    Her Majesty Queen Victoria loved Alice and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass , so much that she wrote a letter to Lewis Carroll, asking if he would send her the rest of his books. Unable to decline a request from the Queen, the humble author obliged as best he could, sending her numerous volumes—all by Charles Dodgson, and all mathematical texts, including the popular beach read Condensation of Determinants, Being a New and Brief Method for Computing Their Arithmetical Values.
    Until the end of his life, this