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…