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.

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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: lewiscarroll-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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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?

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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)

Oh, I agree with you about Shaw, and about other people who are only known by longer versions of their name, but as far as I am aware Dodgson was not such a person. If someone mentioned "George Shaw" to me, I wouldn't have a clue who they meant, but if they said, "Charles Dodgson", I would. I think of him as "Charles Dodgson", not as "Charles Lutwidge Dodgson". Not that I'm bowing down to the Google god or anything, but Google has slightly more matches for "Charles Dodgson" than for "Charles Lutwidge Dodgson". Contrast this with "George Shaw" versus "George Bernard Shaw", where the latter has about twenty times the number of matches! I don't think Dodgson is in the same situation as Shaw at all.

As for the idea of a separate article for his writing, there are already separate articles about his works - see Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and "The Hunting of the Snark". There's no room for another, I don't think... At least, I don't see what such an article would say that wouldn't fit comfortably either into his main biography or into one of the individual articles on his works. I don't really see what the problem is, since the very first line of Dodgson's article says that he is also known as "Lewis Carroll".

And about Jean Plaidy (real name Eleanor Hibbert) - I must admit I'd never heard of her before today! Where was the disagreement about her? She has several pages now, and none seems to have a talk page. It doesn't seem a good idea to me to have lots of articles that are all about the same person but just under different names. It would be rather confusing. All the pages are stubs, anyway - I would suggest merging them under her real name, and making redirects. Then anyone searching for one of her pseudonyms will automatically end up at the right place. -- Oliver P. 18:04 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Well, she started off as Jean Plaidy, the name under which she is overwhelmingly best known -- but someone decided to be clever and move her to Eleanor Hibbert, just because they happened to known her real name (which few people do, even if they read her books). But she had so many pseudonyms, and wrote in different genres, that it seemed like a good idea to have those separate articles, cross-referring to one another.

I'm really surprised about the Google situation on Lewis Carroll -- I'd have thought he was best known by his full name, including the "Lutwidge". But I take your word for it. Presumably, though, you wouldn't be in favour of moving the main George Sand and George Eliot articles to their real names. Or would you? 212.159.41.90[?] 18:16 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

That's me. I didn't notice I'd been logged out. Deb 18:18 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Ermmm... I don't know. I don't see why it would matter if people were under their real names, if all the redirects were in place, and the opening lines made it clear who was being talked about. But I suppose I would find it strange to find George Sand or George Eliot under their real names, as I only know them by their pseudonyms. I suppose where people want articles to be depends partly on the subjective matter of whether they think of the person primarily as just some author, or as a real person. As a biographical article develops from just a basic list of publications into a full-blown analysis of the person's life, it would just seem (to me, at least) more and more strange to refer to them by a pen name. Don't you think so?

I suppose it wouldn't really matter if Dodgson went under "Lewis Carroll", as long as the article itself made it clear that he was really "Charles Dodgson", so if everyone thinks he should go there, I'll give in. (As for his middle name, my impression was that people only know it because it's the source of his pseudonym, not because he actually used it very much, but I could be wrong.) But I still think he should go under one or the other, and not both, to save confusion. In the case of someone with several pseudonyms which are all fairly well known, I think it would be best to go for the real name to prevent disputes between people who know the person under different pseudonyms. But whatever name is picked, I think that the real name and all the pseudonyms should go in the introductory paragraph, which would then be followed by the biographical information and the list of works, without splitting these into separate articles; otherwise it would confuse people, I think. -- Oliver P. 18:50 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

It's very difficult, isn't it? I mean, I can totally see your point of view. And Jean Plaidy was a bit of a special case, because she was so well known under so many different pseudonyms, all of which were better known than her real name. You can rest easy, I'm not going to attempt to move Dodgson unless lots of other people agree with me. Deb 21:26 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Ah, it's all terribly tricky. I'll probably have changed my mind by this time next week, anyway. ;) Anyone else want to put in an opinion...? -- Oliver P. 02:41 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

We have an article at Mark Twain, not Samuel Clemens or Samuel Langhorn Clemens. Consistancy, anybody? -- Zoe

Lots of people are known by lots of different names. The only way we can have consistency is if there is a set rule, e.g. giving only the name they had at birth. Since we have agreed not to have such a set rule, there is no chance of consistency, and we have to treat each person on a case-by-case basis. -- Oliver P. 14:22 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

But there is a set rule, namely to use the most common name of somebody or something. So that means the article goes under Carroll in this case. --Camembert

Hum - who the hell is "Charles Lutwidge Dodgson" - oh it is Lewis Carroll! Come on people we have a clear naming convention on this at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Of course in the article itself we should prefer the guys real name but page titles are to enable people to most easily find and directly link to our articles. Thus William Bonnie's article is at Billy the Kid and Linda Boreman's article is at Linda Lovelace. --mav

Moved. --mav

There was a redirect at "Lewis Carroll" already. Redirect pages can be both (a) linked to, and (b) found in a search, so the ease of linking to and finding the article is precisely the same wherever the article is. So I don't see what your argument is. Is it just that you don't like redirects? -- Oliver P. 14:22 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with redirects, you're right, but it's better to have the page under the correct name by the conventions because people are likely to be influenced by how other pages are named when it comes to naming their own pages (if you see what I mean) - so if they see articles under birth names, they'll do that themselves, if they see common names, they'll do that (that's the idea, anyway). In other words, following the conventions promotes them. There's another reason, I guess - people interested in Lewis Carroll but who don't know much about him might see Dodgson come up on recent changes and not take any notice, because they don't realise who it is. There are probably other reasons I can't think of. I agree it's not the biggest deal in the world, but as mav says, there's a convention at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), and it ought to be followed. --Camembert

Hmmmmmmm... Oh, all right then. -- Oliver P. 14:36 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)