Isa Bowman (1874–1958) was an actress, a close friend of Lewis Carroll and author of a memoir about his life, The Story of Lewis Carroll, Told for Young People by the Real Alice in Wonderland.
She met Carroll in 1886 when she played a small part in the stage version of Alice in Wonderland with Phoebe Carlo in the title role: she replaced Carlo as Alice in the 1888 revival.Moses, pp.244-247Collingwood (1898) p.280 She visited and stayed with him between the ages of fifteen and nineteen: Carroll described a visit in July 1888 in Isa's Visit to Oxford,Foulkes (2005) p.135 which she reprinted in her memoir. Carroll introduced her to Ellen Terry,Foulkes (2005) p.103 who gave her elocution lessons. Carroll dedicated his last novel Sylvie and Bruno to her in 1889: her name appears in a double acrostic poem in the introduction.Collingwood (1898) p.403Moses, p.272
She married the journalist George Reginald Bacchus in 1899.Morton Norton Cohen, Roger Lancelyn Green, (1979) vol.2, p.710 In 1899–1900 Bacchus published a fictionalised version of her life in Society, a magazine he was editing.James G. Nelson, Peter Mendes, (2000) p.291 The publisher Leonard Smithers then commissioned a pornographic version which was published as The Confessions of Nemesis Hunt (issued in three volumes 1902, 1903, 1906).James G. Nelson, Peter Mendes, (2000) p.348Frank A. Hoffmann, Analytical survey of Anglo-American traditional erotica, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1973, , p.34Tracy C. Davis, "The Actress in Victorian Pornography", Theatre Journal, Vol. 41, No. 3, Performance in Context (Oct., 1989), pp. 294-315 Kristine Ottesen Garrigan, Victorian scandals: representations of gender and class, Ohio University Press, 1992, , pp.113,131
Isa Bowman was the daughter of Charles Andrew Bowman (b. 1851), a music teacher,Foulkes (2005) p.67 and Helen Herd, née Holmes. Her sisters, Empsie, Nellie (Mrs Spens) and Maggie (Mrs Tom Morton) Bowman were all actresses,Cohen & Lancelyn Green (1979) vol.1 p.710‘Marriage of Maggie Bowman’, The Era, 14 June 1902 p. 11 and also friends of Carroll. According to Maggie's father-in-law, William Morton, the sisters were all actresses from a very early age. He said that Maggie had an amusing diary in rhyme written by Carroll about her visit to Oxford as a young child.Morton, William (1934). I Remember. (A Feat of Memory.). Market-place. Hull: Goddard. Walker and Brown. Ltd., pp. 127-128
Isa played a small part in the 1949 British film Vote for Huggett, together with her sisters Empsie and Nellie.
In popular culture Gyles Brandreth's play Wonderland about the relationship between Isa Bowman and Dodgson was performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2010.
References
External links
'Isa's Visit to Oxford' by Lewis Carroll, full text with annotations and illustrations at: Lewis Carroll Resources