Isa Bowman

{{Short description|British actress (1874–1958)}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2016}}

{{Use British English|date=February 2016}}

File:Isa Bowman as Alice 1888.jpg

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{{cite book | title=The diaries of Lewis Carroll | volume=2 | series=Opie Collection of Children's Literature | first=Lewis | last=Carroll | publisher=Cassell | year=1954 | page=557 }}{{cite book | title=Alice beyond wonderland: essays for the twenty-first century | first=Cristopher | last=Hollingsworth | publisher=University of Iowa Press | year=2009 | isbn=978-1-58729-819-6 | page=163 }}{{cite book | title=Lewis Carroll: a biography | first=Michael | last=Bakewell | publisher=Heinemann | year=1996 | isbn=0-434-04579-9 | page=287 }} which she reprinted in her memoir.{{cite book | title=Lewis Carroll and Alice, 1832-1982| first=Morton Norton | last=Cohen | publisher=Pierpont Morgan Library | year=1982 | page=96 }} Carroll introduced her to Ellen Terry,Foulkes (2005) p.103 who gave her elocution lessons.{{cite book | title=Lewis Carroll: through the looking glass | first=Angelica Shirley | last=Carpenter | publisher=Twenty-First Century Books | year=2003 | isbn=0-8225-0073-6 | page=103 }} 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{{cite book | title=The universe in a handkerchief: Lewis Carroll's mathematical recreations, games, puzzles, and word plays | first=Martin | last=Gardner | authorlink=Martin Gardner | publisher=Birkhäuser | year=1996 | isbn=0-387-25641-5 | page=5 }}

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, {{ISBN|0-87972-055-7}}, p.34Tracy C. Davis, "The Actress in Victorian Pornography", Theatre Journal, Vol. 41, No. 3, Performance in Context (Oct., 1989), pp. 294-315 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3208182]{{cite book | title=Actresses as working women: their social identity in Victorian culture | series=Gender and performance | first=Tracy C. | last=Davis | publisher=Routledge | year=1991 | isbn=0-415-05652-7 | pages=145, 180, 183}}Kristine Ottesen Garrigan, Victorian scandals: representations of gender and class, Ohio University Press, 1992, {{ISBN|0-8214-1019-9}}, 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.{{cite book | title=Lewis Carroll: interviews and recollections | first=Morton Norton | last=Cohen | publisher=Macmillan | year=1989 | isbn=0-333-41721-6 | pages=101–102 }} 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.{{IMDb name|0101326/}}