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The Labouchère Amendment and Oscar Wilde
While the literature of the Victorian era collectively celebrated the innocence of children, no single work highlighted this more than Lewis Carroll’s The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland (1865). As one Carroll biographer, Morton Cohen, has pointed out:
Wonderland is the tale of quest, a trial, a test. It is a series of episodes that pits a young person against a bewildering cast of adult characters who behave incomprehensibly, according to arcane conventions. It illustrates how a young inexperienced person can deal with this inexplicably chaotic world and survive as part of it. When Alice wakes, she returns to the reassuring comfort and companionship of her sister and, by extension, to the welcoming arms of her family. Though more experienced now, she is still young, but she is ready.
In 1885 and twenty years on from its publication—and having sold several hundred thousand copies in Britain alone—Alice’s fictional experiences were contrasted with many less privileged…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins