Although one could argue that the genre dates back millennia, Samuel Smiles coined a new term when he published Self-Help in 1859 consequently opening the floodgates to authors attempting to solve the world’s problems one narcissistic step at a time. If one searches the term “self help” in Google today, almost fifty-eight million matches will be returned. An arguably large segment of the self-help phenomena involves books that assist us in specific areas such as personal finance, knitting, or sex. The “For Dummies” publisher alone has over seventy-eight thousand titles currently available on Amazon.com. This is not a modern day marvel. A vast array of how-to books was available to readers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Starting with the premise that these books purport to be the final word on the matter, examples of early manuals, templates, recipe books, diagrams, and “(...)
Lewis Carroll's children's books especially Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) are widely known and celebrated. Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll, at the International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street from June 6 through August 31, 2003, makes a new argument for Carroll's importance as a photographer. This exhibition of vintage albumen prints from the 1850's through the 1870's organized by Douglas R. Nickel, curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, is the first comprehensive American presentation of Lewis Carroll's remarkable photographic work in fifty years.
The Online Books Page is a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet. It also aims to encourage the development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of all.
The Lewis Carroll picture book; a selection from the unpublished writings and drawings of Lewis Carroll, together with reprints from scarce and unacknowledged work. Edited by Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
The Homepage of Thomas De Quincey is devoted to the study of the life and writings of the nineteenth-century English essayist and opium addict Thomas De Quincey. In addition to a biography, a chronology, and a series of links to other revelant material, the site contains an extensive bibliography that lists more than 200 titles by and about De Quincey.
The Lewis Carroll Scrapbook at the Library of Congress is an original scrapbook that was kept by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Better known as Lewis Carroll, the Victorian-era children’s author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), Dodgson was a lecturer in mathematics at the University of Oxford. The scrapbook contains approximately 130 items, including newspaper clippings, photographs, and a limited number of manuscript materials, collected between 1855-72. A timeline, authored by Edward Wakeling, former chairman of the Lewis Carroll Society, helps to place materials found in the scrapbook in their proper context.