Isa Bowman

Who was Isa Bowman?

Isa Bowman 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: she played the part of Alice in the 1888 revival. 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, which she reprinted in her memoir. Carroll introduced her to Ellen Terry, 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.

She married the journalist George Reginald Bacchus in 1899. In 1899-1900 Bacchus published a fictionalised version of her life in Society, a magazine he was editing. The publisher Leonard Smithers then commissioned a pornographic version which was published as The Confessions of Nemesis Hunt.

Isa Bowman was the daughter of Charles Andrew Bowman, a music teacher, and Helen Herd, née Holmes. Her sisters, Empsie, Nellie and Maggie Bowman were all actresses, and also friends of Carroll. She played a small part in the 1949 British film Vote for Huggett, together with her sisters Empsie and Nellie.