Charles Kingsley: The 20th Century Critical Heritage

 
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Lewis Carroll
Cripps, Elizabeth A.  “Lewis Carroll, and Charles and Henry Kingsley,” Jabberwocky: The Journal of the Lewis Carroll Society Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer 1980): 59-66.
Cripps considers data relating to three topics in this article: Carroll's knowledge of and interest in Kingsley and his works; Carroll's friendship with Henry Kingsley; and the parallels between The Water-Babies and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. With respect to the parallels, Cripps cautions about talking of influences, declaring that it is quite likely that two authors, themselves the product of similar backgrounds, should sometimes use the same ideas when composing a children's story.
Carroll, Lewis; The Water-Babies; Kingsley, Henry.
 

Makman, Lisa Hermine. “Child’s Work is Child’s Play: The Value of George MacDonald’s Diamond,” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly Vol. 24, No. 3 (Fall 1999): 119-129.
Makman discusses Kingsley's treatment of the child in The Water-Babies, as well as that of Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in her examination of MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind.  While the latter work, she declares, presents the child as the new toy-child, depicting, after the cessation of child-labor, the gradual development of the notion that children are essentially toys, Kingsley's novel has a different orientation.  "But while Kingsley emphasizes the mysterious nature of the play-world and its inhabitants, MacDonald focuses more on the mysterious nature of the child who can enter that world" (122).
The Water-Babies; MacDonald, George; Children; Carroll, Lewis.

 
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