The image of 'Lewis Carroll', the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, is almost as well known as his most famous book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Everyone 'knows' he was a shy, stammering clergyman, hopelessly in love with the little girl whose name he celebrated in his immortal work. Dozens of biographies have been written about this image, and it has been celebrated in numerous movies, TV plays and works of fiction. To most people it simply is Lewis Carroll.

But is it?

A number of years ago a book emerged that challenged this image at its roots. Karoline Leach's 'controversial' and critically acclaimed In the Shadow of the Dreamchild put forward the startling idea that this image was simply a myth, constructed by biographers through mistakes, misapprehensions and overactive imagination. She suggested the real Carroll/Dodgson was a very different entity; mature, complex, socially at ease and extremely interested in women. At the time she caused considerable controversy, but in the decade since her book appeared other scholars and writers from diverse disciplines, have begun to look at the question of precisely what biography has done to Lewis Carroll.