A Ghost of a Text: A Digital Object of Lewis Carroll’s Phantasmagoria and Other Poems

The W.D. Jordan Special Collections at Queen’s University Libraries houses a first edition copy of Lewis Carroll’s Phantasmagoria and Other Poems (1869) which forms the material basis of our digital object. We present this project as a record of our engagement with this individual material object. Central to our treatment of Phantasmagoria is our desire to grapple with the shared and divergent contexts of both the original object and the digital object that we have produced. As editors and readers, we look to understand both objects’ material histories, the human involvement in their production, and the audiences to which they are directed. Ultimately, this project entails two texts: one that inserts itself into its original, Victorian context, surviving to our present context by the archival efforts of Queen’s Libraries; the other that must straddle the original context and the new, digital and editorial materiality.

The object presents a digitized copy of the book, taking as a guideline the digitization best practices provided in consultation with archivists, librarians, and conservationists at the Internet Archive, Queen’s Special Collections, and Queen’s Archives. We have provided an introductory and historical essay detailing the history of publication for the first edition—the correspondence between Charles Dodgson (alias Lewis Carroll), and his publisher, Alexander Macmillan at The House of Macmillan, Dodgson’s diaries and biography and the broader field of mid-Victorian publishing that his work fits into. We have also assembled a Statement of Design, a written record of the processes and technologies that we have chosen to use, and how we understand our project to fit into a digital-material sphere. The object itself entails some light editorial markup, concentrated primarily on the title poem, “Phantasmagoria,” to guide and inform future audiences that may engage with the digital-material text. As our engagement is small in scale, and our primary decision-making process was largely oral and collaborative, we hope that this statement might complement the paper-trail record of letters, diaries, and ledger books that marks the event of Dodgson’s and Macmillan’s commercial partnership.

Phantasmagoria offers a site in which we may read a textual parallel to the material and digital history of the book. In an explanation of the edition’s cover illustrations, Carroll provides the two interwoven metaphors through which we may come to understand the work: “The decorations on the cover represent the Crab Nebula in Taurus and Donati’s Comet, two distinguished members of the Celestial Phantasmagoria” (Prefatory Material). For Dodgson, constellations, nebulae, and comets are the phantasmagoria of the sky. In a text whose title poem is filled with literary phantoms, spectres, Goblin-Kings, and ghosts, the collection of verse and satire hangs together disjointedly, marking discrete points drawn from the sphere of Carroll’s literary works. This constellation of text, one in which the constituent pieces seem to have more of an incidental than a coherent association, becomes ghostly—the material record shows Dodgson’s frustrated attempts to find an illustrator, debates over inclusions and exclusions, and the largely forgotten nature of Phantasmagoria in Carroll scholarship. In many ways, Phantasmagoria’s ghostliness prefigures a ghostliness that would intensify in the on-going life of the text after its publication. As a first edition that seems so out of place in Dodgson’s oeuvre, it becomes haunted by what it fails to be—to be illustrated, to be coherent, to be remembered. Our visitation upon the text hopes to follow the lead of Tibbets, the speaker of “Phantasmagoria,” to become a speaker to the ghosts of the text’s material history.

History of the Text

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) has left a rich textual record of the process of publication of Phantasmagoria. The letters between him and the House of Macmillan, his meticulous diary entries, and his deep monetary and creative involvement in the production of the work map out the constellation of works and personal contacts that support his publications. Mid-Victorian publishing houses did not take on the copy-editing, financing, or book-design roles that we now understand to be their purview. Instead, publishers took care almost exclusively of sales and marketing and “in return, [typically] received a fixed ten percent of the receipts” (Cohen, “Introduction,” House of Macmillan 15). It was the author who took on the bulk of the risk of publication, contracting and financing publishing and illustration costs, and in many cases the costs of marketing (14). Dodgson, did, indeed, take on these risks. He “determined the size of the book, the quality of the paper, the size and style of the type. He selected the binding; engaged the printer, the engraver, the illustrator; and he paid them. He decided how many books would constitute the first printing. He determined the extent of the advertising, and he set the price for the book" (15). Macmillan was to simply sell Dodgson’s books, literary and mathematical, “on commission” (14), an arrangement that was by no means unusual, as “in 1890, a spokesman for the Society of Authors reported that ‘at least three-quarters of modern fiction was published on commission’” (15). Dodgson’s interaction with his publishers, then, is one in which the eventual material reality of the printed object is the immediate topic of discussion. Dodgson did not simply produce a literary text and then leave its material production up to a third party; the commercial and material realities of Victorian authorship demanded engagement with the book as a material object.

In addition to the active role of Victorian authors in the publication process, Dodgson developed a keen interest in the publication industry, keeping up with “new technology” and showing a “confident command of publishing terms” (19). A meticulous man, he was “ever vigilant, taking little for granted, anticipating problems, recording his thoughts and expectations clearly and in detail, and giving explicit instructions” (19). On January 28^th, 1868, Dodgson proposes Phantasmagoria to Alexander Macmillan, demonstrating both the role of the Victorian author in the publication process and Dodgson’s own “precise, accountable” (20) approach to the publication of his books:

My dear Sir, ….

Now I have a new idea to broach to you. I want to bring out a small volume of verses, most of them reprints from Magazines, but the first and longest quite new. And I should like to give Mr. [Thomas] Combe the printing: will you publish it? My idea is to do all for it that type and paper will do, and to use broad leads. I think none but the best poetry will stand close printing and cheap paper—and that the colour of the binding should match Alice. And lastly, I should like to print a very small number, say 250. I could hope no better for it than that it should get out of print and require a 2nd edition. If you will publish it at Easter, I will begin printing at once, that I may have as long as possible for correcting and polishing.

Yours very truly,

C.L. Dodgson

(60)

Macmillan would eventually print 1600 copies of Phantasmagoria in the first edition (600 in the first imprint) (Diaries 7 Jan 1869), and the work did, indeed, require several additional editions: Phantasmagoria would become become a frequent topic of discussion between Dodgson and Macmillan, and the changes to the collection’s content were significant enough that Dodgson decided to rename the work Rhyme? And Reason? for the 1883 edition, after almost half of the pieces had been omitted, including “Elections to the Hebdomadal Council,” and several new pieces added, including “The Hunting of the Snark” (Rhyme? And Reason?). Although neither Dodgson’s letters nor his diaries explicitly express his dissatisfaction over the contents of the first edition, they do display a certain nervous uncertainty over two primary aspects of the publication: audience and illustration.

The first of these uncertainties can be uncovered in the original publication contexts of the collected works; the periodical and pamphlet contexts belonged to a distinctly adult, frequently Oxonian context which seems in many ways at odds with the more juvenile, illustrated edition of Rhyme? And Reason? that eventually emerged after Dodgson’s revisions¹. The first-edition publication of Phantasmagoria includes several original poems: among the “gay” poems in the first section, “Phantasmagoria,” “A Valentine,” and “A Double Acrostic,” and among the “grave” poems in the second section, “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” “Lines,” “Stanzas for Music,” and “Christmas Greetings.” The other poems in the volume were pulled from “various magazines and periodicals,” (Carroll, Phantasmagoria). In The Train, a publication established by Edmund Yates, George Augustus Sala, and Frank Smedley in 1855 to fill the void left by the now-defunct College Times (Bakewell 74), Dodgson published “Ye Carpette Knyghte” (1856), (published anonymously (Dodgson, Diaries Jan 11 1855)), “Solitude” (1856) “The Path of Roses,” “The Sailor’s Wife” (1857), “Hiawatha’s Photographing” (1858), and “The Three Voices” (1858)². “Faces in the Fire” (1860) appeared in Charles Dickens’s All the Year Round, “After Three Days” (1861) in Temple Bar, and “Atalanta in Camden-Town” (1867) in Punch.

College Rhymes published the most numerous of the poems that were collected in Phantasmagoria: “The Lang Coortin’” (1861), “Three Sunsets” (originally “The Dream of Fame,” 1861), “Melancholetta” (1862), “Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur” (1862), “Stolen Waters” (1862), “Only a Woman’s Hair” (1862), “Size and Tears” (1863), and “Beatrice” (1863) all appeared there. Among his numerous contributions to the review, Dodson signs his poetry “‘B.B.’, ‘R.W.G.’, ‘K’, or for serious poems, ‘C.L.D.’” (Dodgson, Diaries 161), and gives them the “attribution to ‘Ch.Ch.,’” or Christ Church (161). Dodgson, in fact, edited College Rhymes from 1862 to 1863, and under his watch “the review became more Oxonian than Cantabridgian and favored Christ Church contributions” (Cohen, Lewis Carroll 91). The confluence of his literary and academic personae, first in College Rhymes, for an Oxonian audience, then in Phantasmagoria, for a general audience, troubles Dodgson’s carefully protected anonymity upon the separation of the writer and the academic.

Dodgson’s ambivalence to these two spheres was brought to bear upon his consternations over whether or not to include his satirical pamphlet on Oxonian life, “Elections to the Hebdomadal Council” (1866), which he originally circulated privately and anonymously among his Oxbridge peers. Whether and how to include the pamphlet became a topic of particular debate between Dodgson and Macmillan. Dodgson had planned to bring out two distinct editions of Phantasmagoria, one “for private circulation” (or “for circulation among members of Oxford University”) that included “Elections,” and the other for a general audience that would not. He worried that the pamphlet would “not be interesting, or even intelligible, to the general public,” even suggesting that the collection be advertised with this caveat (12 Dec 1868), and wished to acquiesce to the expectations of friends who were “beginning to apply for copies of the poems containing the Oxford squib” (House of Macmillan 74 n1). He further worried that, as he planned to bring out two editions, that his “Oxford friends might be disappointed if they bought the published volume and did not hear of the other till afterwards” (12 Dec 1868). To Dodgson’s eyes, each edition should receive “some distinctive mark…that one may know them from the others” and that the Macmillan monograph should only be printed on the publicly circulated copies (9 Dec 1868); he originally planned to bring out fifty copies (at this point of a total of 500), and then increased that portion to 100, then again to 200. His solution to the possible confusion over the two editions was a long-winded, explanatory advertisement detailing the two editions, and indicating that the edition for an Oxonian audience could be “had, on application to the publishers, at 5s. 6d. a copy” (the copy without the pamphlet was to be sold at 5s.) (12 Dec 1868).

Macmillan discouraged this plan, at first “agreeing that [although] the local topical parody is of less interest to the general public,” the two separate editions would “cause confusion” (qtd. in House of Macmillan 74 n1). He gently assured Dodgson that the “‘first poem will carry the volume’” (74 n1). This gentle disagreement, however, became significantly firmer within a few days, as Macmillan wrote that “‘There is no end to the perplexities [Dodgson’s] proposed scheme [would] cause’” (75 n1), that the pamphlet should be printed and sold separately. Dodgon eventually gave up on the idea, and wrote in his diary that he would include the pamphlet in all 600 copies of the original imprint. Phantasmagoria, then, seems out of place with Dodgson’s dominant oeuvre: while the collection is primarily humorous verse that could be read to children, the mixture of “gay” and “grave,” and the inclusion of a satirical pamphlet about university governance, makes it difficult to categorize the work simply as children’s literature, but neither do its fantastical, light-hearted poems about cheeky ghosts seem entirely geared towards adults. Dodgson’s anxieties about what should or should not be included in the edition locates this uneasy constellation of works in the very process of publishing the book—it is not only a personal decision, but one that he undertakes in consultation with his publishers as an integral part of the material process.

The illustration and decoration of the text provides the second source of uncertainty that emerges in Dodgson’s records. In light of the immense success of Alice in Wonderland, no small part of which could be attributed to the iconic Tenniel illustrations, upon the publication of Phantasmagoria Macmillan could still rely on Carroll’s reputation as the “author of Alice” to lend authority to the marketing of Phantasmagoria. But the first edition of Phantasmagoria is un-illustrated. This decision seems bizarre, if not misguided from the point of view of the literary reputation of Lewis Carroll, and the material needs of Dodgson, not a wealthy man, to make up the publishing costs he would have had to put forward himself. However, Dodgson did attempt to have Phantasmagoria illustrated, asking several illustrators. Dodgson placed most of his hopes in Punch artist, George du Maurier. In September of 1868, Macmillan even seems to have been on the cusp of advertising Phantasmagoria “with frontispiece by G. du Maurier,” but Dodgson wrote to advise the publisher not to as “he has just written to say he can’t do it” (22 Sept 1868); du Maurier, according to Dodgson’s diaries, had been ordered “to take a fortnight’s perfect rest for his eye” (7 Apr 1868), and although du Maurier again wrote “consenting to draw for an illustrated edition of Phantasmagoria” (15 Feb 1869), such illustrations never materialized. Macmillan also suggested John Proctor, the distinguished magazine cartoonist (Macmillan 70 n1), whom Dodgson writes to, but does not seem to have received any response (17 Oct 1868). Dodgson also laments “how well Noël Patton,” illustrator of Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, “would have drawn a ghost-picture for me, if only he were well enough” (22 Sept 1868).

This frustration of Dodgson’s hopes for illustration continues until the publication of Rhyme? And Reason? Dodgson would begin again to search for an illustrator in 1874, receiving samples from and negotiating publication layout with Edwin Linley Sambourne, a Punch cartoonist (Macmillan 24 Dec 1874, 18 Mar 1875, 30 Mar 1877; Diaries 28 Feb 1877); these discussions would go on for several years, and no Sambourne illustrations would appear in Rhyme? And Reason?.s Dodgson would correspond with Walter Crane (Diaries 27 Nov 1877) about illustrations for both Phantasmagoria and Bruno’s Revenge, but Crane seems to have understood this only to be a request for drawings for Bruno. He also received specimens from “E. and A. Fairfield, F.W. Lawson, and [A.M.] Hendschel,” but took John Ruskin’s advice that non of these artists “‘come near to Tenniel’” and are “‘inferior to [Henry] Holiday’” (qtd. in Diaries). Rhyme? And Reason? would eventually include illustrations by Arthur Burdett Frost and Holiday. Dodgson would note in his diaries that he “ordered first picture on Feb:7, 1878, more than five and a half years ago” on the day he finally sent off the final page of Rhyme? And Reason? “marked ‘Press’” (18 Oct 1883).

However, one element of visual ornamentation that retains a prominent place in the first edition, one that Dodgson himself put a great deal of effort into, is the design of the front and back covers of the book. Dodgson originally requested that the cover of Phantasmagoria be red to match the cover of Alice in Wonderland. In his criticisms of the “specimen” sent by Macmillan, Dodgson’s commitment not only to the quality of the published item, but also to its visual and material luxury come to the foreground: although he likes the “picturesque and fantastic” “name at the back” of the specimen, that is “about the only thing [he] like[s]” (Dodgson, House of Macmillan Oct 17 1868). The red of the current specimen had “the effect of black threads being mixed among the red” and it should instead “be a much brighter red”; likewise, the “boards should project a little more beyond the edge of the book.” What Dodgson perceived to be shortcomings of the specimen contravened his understanding of the material dimensions of the printed object that should accompany specific genres of literature: “poetry, being a luxurious form of literature, should have all possible luxurious accessories.” Alexander Macmillan eventually convinced Dodgson to publish the book with a blue binding as it more suited the celestial theme of the cover design: “these skyey objects seem so homeless without the blue, that we have ventured to see if we cannot induce you to adopt the native colour. Privately I hope you will. It is so pretty” (Dodgson, House of Macmillan 72 n1).

Dodgson spent quite a bit of energy upon appropriate cover illustrations for Phantasmagoria. He suggested Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) and The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (1866) as possible models, possibly mistaking their cover design for another, as Rossetti’s volumes “bear a simple pattern of double lines paralleling the borders of the books” (Dodgson, House of Macmillan 62 n2). Dodgson peppers his letters to Macmillan with sketches for possible cover design, suggesting “a shower of meteors” (22 Oct 1868), swirly galaxies, sparkly starbursts, borders and curlicues, and a fantastical type face that shows up almost exactly on the spine of the book. He provides three illustrations of the spine alone, one of which the final spine design is clearly based upon, and five sketches suggesting cover ornamentation. On the publication itself, the illustration on the front cover represents the Crab Nebula in the constellation of Taurus, and this illustration mimics the 1844 sketch of the nebula by the Earl of Rosse who coined the moniker, “Crab Nebula.” Donati’s Comet, a spectacular comet discovered in 1858 by Giovanni Battista Donati, and the most brilliant comet observed since 1811, graces the back cover. Both of these “distinguished members of the Celestial Phantasmagoria,” Dodgson’s meticulous attention to cover design, and his attempt to understand the material dimensions of his publication in context of other writers situates him in this material publication culture. Although the text in many ways only retains what amount to “ghost-pictures,” to borrow from Dodgson’s letters, what visual and material dimensions of publication that Dodgson did have control over, he understood to be central to his collection.

Acknowledgments

We will donate our work on Phantasmagoria to the W.D. Jordan Special Collections at Queen’s. As the first student-led digitization project for Special Collections, we hope that its addition to the catalogue will contribute to an on-going engagement with the primary object, one that may grow and change alongside the life of the collection. We wish to offer our sincere thanks to Jeremy Heil (Technical Services Archivist) and Margaret Bignell (Conservator) at the Queen’s Archives, to Gabe Juszel (Digital Scanning Coordinator, Toronto) at Internet Archive, to Dr. Shelley King in the Queen’s Department of English, and, especially, to Barbara Teatero at the W.D. Jordan Special Collections for their warm support and encouragement during this project.

Works Cited

Bakewell, Michael. Lewis Carroll: A Biography. London: Heinemann, 1996. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Phantasmagoria. London: Macmillan, 1869. Print.

---. Rhyme? And Reason? Toronto: Macmillan, 1913. Print.

Cohen, Morton. Lewis Carroll: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Print.

Cohen, Morton N. and Anita Gandolfo, eds. Lewis Carroll and the House of Macmillan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. Print.

Cohen, Morton N. and Edward Wakeling, eds. Lewis Carroll & His Illustrators: Collaborators & Correspondence, 1865-1898. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2003. Print.

Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson. The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (Rev. C.L. Dodgson). New York: The Century Co, 1899. Web. Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11483/11483-h/11483-h.htm

Dodgson, Charles. The Diaries of Lewis Carroll. Roger Lancelyn Green, ed. London: Cassel & Company, 1953. Print.