Sylvie and Bruno
Lewis Carroll
(, Jan. 14, 2018)
Sylvie and Bruno, first published in 1889, and its 1893 second volume Sylvie and Bruno Concluded form the last novel by Lewis Carroll published during his lifetime. Both volumes were illustrated by Harry Furniss. The novel has two main plots; one set in the real world at the time the book was published (the Victorian era), the other in the fantasy world of Fairyland. While the latter plot is a fairy tale with many nonsense elements and poems, similar to Carroll's Alice books, the story set in Victorian Britain is a social novel, with its characters discussing various concepts and aspects of religion, society, philosophy and morality.First Page:SYLVIE and BRUNO by LEWIS CARROLLIs all our Life, then but a dream Seen faintly in the goldern gleam Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?Bowed to the earth with bitter woe Or laughing at some raree show We flutter idly to and fro.Man's little Day in haste we spend, And, from its merry noontide, send No glance to meet the silent end.PREFACE.One little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, at p. 77, was drawn by 'Miss Alice Havers.' I did not state this on the title page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to my mind) wonderful pictures, that his name should stand there alone.The descriptions, at pp. 386, 387, of Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted verbatim from a speech made to me by a child friend and a letter written to me by a lady friend.The Chapters, headed 'Fairy Sylvie' and 'Bruno's Revenge,' are a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy tale which I wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for 'Aunt Judy's Magazine,' which she was then editing...