Talk:Lewis Carroll
The story that Dodgson wanted to marry Alice Liddell is just a myth - there's no evidence it was ever true, and no evidence to show he was a paedophile. You should read "In the Shadow of the Dreamchild" by Karoline Leach - it's a great book. It reads like a detective story and separates all the many myths about Lewis Carroll from the truth, and shows everyone's had it pretty wrong about him. It's also gor some great investiagtion of the mysterious missing pages in his diary and how they came to be cut out.
If anyone wants to find out more about Carroll they can join the lewis carroll mailing list at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lewiscarroll
Just go along and sign in - or you can subscribe direct by sending a blank email to: [email protected]
Do we need to sully this man's reputation with innuendo?
Are we going to add innuendo to all the other people's entries that we may have heard rumours about?
What innuendo? That he took nude pictures of children is an easily verified historical fact. The book is still available in libraries in countries that don't have their heads up their ass about nudity the way the US does. It is not verifiable that he ever abused children in any way, and the article, properly, makes no such accusation. There is some evidence that he asked Alice Liddel's parents for permission to marry her, but again, no evidence of any abuse, and considerable evidence to suggest otherwise. --LDC
When Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was 31 and Alice Liddle was 11 he wanted
to marry her but his proposition was declined by her parents.
Later when she was 13 he remarked that she had changed for the worse
and lost all his interest in her. The same lack of interest after
puberty ensued with almost 100 other girls. Notably he was never
on friendly terms with boys.
The idea that Dodgson proposed marriage to Alice Liddell when she was eleven is an idea completely invented by modern day biographers. There is not a shred of evidence to show he ever did or that he ever even thought about doing so. There is likewise no evidence to show he was ever 'in love' with her or any other child.
As for his child nude photography. It looks weird to our eyes, but to the Victorians child-nudity was not only acceptable it was fashionable. Virtually all photographers did such studies and they were considered so innocent and inoffensive people even put images of nude children on Christmas cards. So, saying Dodgson must have been a paeddophile because he took phoographs of naked children simply displays our ignorance of his century.
And no Dodgson did NOT lose interest in girls after the age of puberty - this is simply a myth. In fact he had far more interest in older girls than in very tiny children. Most of his 'child-friends' were teenagers or even in their twenties. And during his lifetime he was gossiped about for his many 'unconventional' friendships with married woman.
You really need to get acquainted with the latest research on the matter.
Removed this para because it's a lead into the book the page was taken from -AdamW
The more than an century that has elapsed since then has shown an explosion of the Carroll mythology. Elaborate tales are now told of the how and why of Dodgson's life and mind. He has been presented as paedophile, perpetual child, as scholar-saint as innocent dreamer of children, as a deviant resident in an ivory tower or dreaming spire. But how did these truths get here? Are they any kind of reality? The rest of this book will be an attempt to answer these questions, and trace the strange story of how "Carroll" came to be born and to eclipse the reality of the man who created him.
One more thing about the nude photography angle. Go to any Chinatown and you'll find a photography store with full frontal nudity of little boys (genitals prominently showing so that the viewer knows the child is a boy). Would this be considered child pornography if the FBI investigated?
The nude photos = pedophilia argument is just as fallacious as the argument that Mark Twain's book Huckleberry Finn is racist because it uses the word nigger several hundred times.
Greetings. I notice that this entry is followed by this message:-
- This extract is taken from 'In the Shadow of the Dreamchild', by Karoline Leach, with permission from the author. It's also available on the Victorian Web which includes an excellent biography section on Carroll
If the entry purports to be an extract from a book, does this mean we're not allowed to edit it?
Will anyone mind if I move this to Charles Dodgson? I'm going to wait for a while to see if there are objections. -- Zoe
- Ack. I would have objected. I certainly object to dropping the Lutwidge entirely. It is clear that he derived his pen name from this middle name. For my money, the whole thing should be under the name he is most famous for, that is, Lewis Carrol. At least, restore the Lutwidge to the article. Ortolan88
- I agree, it should be at Lewis Carroll. I added Lutwidge to the article, an oversight, it should have been in there already. -- Zoe
Let's put the article at Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, which is the man's full name and is more easily recognizable with the 'Lutwidge' than without. We can have redirects both from Charles Dodgson and Lewis Carroll. I daresay he's much better known by his pen name -- much the same as Mark Twain. --Ed Poor
- Done. --Ed Poor 15:05 Dec 4, 2002 (UTC)
- Well, given that he's better known by his pen name, I'm going to move the article there (Lewis Carroll). --Camembert
- Actually, I say that, but I've looked at the article again, and see he is referred to throughout as "Dodgson", so it might seem a little odd to put it under "Carroll". I'll leave it be for now, though I certainly think it should be at Lewis Carroll - do other people think it would be OK to just move the article as it is, or would it be better to change references to him to "Carroll" or what? --Camembert
It's nice that Ms. Leach has given permission to use her information, but is she aware that there's no guarantee it won't be changed? -- Zoe
- I asked about that back on 4th November 2002 (see anoymous entry further up). I'm worried that the wording of the note about permission (which was added by an anonymous contributor, 195.93.33.xxx) seems to imply that Karoline Leach wanted it to remain an extract from her book. Does anyone happen to know how to contact Ms. Leach...? -- Oliver PEREIRA 05:12 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC)
- Surely the picture of Alice Liddell should be on here page and Lewis Carroll's picture on this one. Mintguy
- Yup, quite right! And it will go there, eventually. I found the Charles Dodgson article on my very first day here, and thought it was odd that the picture was there rather than at Alice Liddell, but then I found that there wasn't an article on Alice, so that was why! I started an article on her that day, but it's still so stubby that the picture would look awful there, completely dominating the page. So I think it would be better to wait until the article gets bigger before moving the picture across. -- Oliver P. 06:18 Feb 11, 2003 (UTC)
- Oh yes, perhaps I should point out that the picture is now at Alice Liddell. Now all we need is a picture of Charles Dodgson to put here. Does anyone happen to have have one...? -- Oliver P. 07:08 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)
- http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=%22lewis+carroll%22
- or http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=%22Charles+Lutwidge+Dodgson%22 take your pick
Yup, well, I would have done, but I'm still not entirely sure about the copyright laws... I mean, could someone claim that the way they scanned and compressed an image, even a public domain one, used just a slight amount of artistic judgement, and that therefore the result could be copyrighted...? Well, I don't know... -- Oliver P. 15:45 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)
- Yeah I don't know either. The buggers at the National Portrait Gallery won't let you use images from their site without going through hoops. It's a pain. Mintguy
I only just saw Camembert's comment above. I've always thought this article should be at Lewis Carroll, and, if that means changing all the references to Dodgson, I'm all for it. Deb 21:17 Feb 13, 2003 (UTC)
"Lewis Carroll" was only his pen name: a name he used to stick on the front of his books. He would not usually have been referred to in real life in this way, by people who knew him as a person. A biographical article discussing his life as a real person should refer to him by his real name. Even if the article is moved to Lewis Carroll (which I wouldn't be very happy with), it should still refer to him as Dodgson throughout the text. (Except to say things like, "which he published under the pseudonym 'Lewis Carroll'", of course.) I'd be happy with Charles Dodgson as a title, as it's his real name, and the usual convention here is not to include middle names. -- Oliver P. 19:06 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)
- I can see your point - kind of - but I don't think it's true that there's a convention of not using middle names, or at least not when the middle name is normally used when referring to the person, as it is in this case. (George Shaw would sound pretty silly, wouldn't it?) Would there be any support for the idea of two separate articles - one specifically about Lewis Carroll's writing, and another about the man behind the pen-name, who is quite interesting in his own right? I ask because there was a minor disagreement over Jean Plaidy, and I sort of settled it by making different articles for her under all her pen-names. Deb 14:14 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)