Between 1865 and 1930, five writers who could not grow up transformed their longing for childhood into a literary revolution. Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J. M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A. A. Milne stand at the center of a golden age of Victorian and early twentieth-century children's literature.

From the vibrantly imagined stories of Alice in Wonderland to the enchanted, magical worlds of Peter Pan and Winnie-the-Pooh, these five writers made the realms of fantasy they envisioned an enduring part of our everyday culture. We return to these classics again and again, for enjoyment as children and for the consolation and humor they offer adults.

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In Inventing Wonderland, Jackie Wullschlager explores the lives behind the fantasies of these remarkable writers as well as the cultural and social forces which helped shape their visions. As Wullschlager shows, each writer was not only childlike, but also born into a society which made a cult of childhood.

In another age, their interests might have made them minor talents, but in Victorian and Edwardian England, they were mainstream writers in touch with the mood of a nation, working with the unconscious force of a whole society behind them.

In this captivating, richly illustrated multiple biography, Jackie Wullschlager draws on the letters, memoirs, and diaries of these five writers and reveals how their fixations with childhood had much to do with adult fears, self-doubts, and nostalgia in a changing society.