Introduction
"Lewis Carroll" was the pseudonym of the English writer and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the creator of the classics Alice in Wonderland (1865), Through The Looking Glass (1872), and The Hunting of the Snark (1876). Out of these came characters, sayings and phrases which now fill the English language and the English imagination.
The son of a clergyman and the firstborn of 11 children, Carroll began at an early age to entertain himself and his sisters with magic tricks, marionette shows, and poems written for homemade newspapers. From 1846 to 1850 he attended Rugby School; he graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1854. Carroll remained there, lecturing on mathematics and writing treatises and guides for students. Although he took deacon's orders in 1861, Carroll was never ordained a priest, partly because he was afflicted with a stammer that made preaching difficult and partly, perhaps, because he had discovered other interests - little girls and photography.
Evidence :
Dodgson/Carroll's paedophilia has been well documented by many sources. The two most recent biographies (below) go into frank and extensive detail. The book by Bakewell is perhaps the most entertaining of the two. Cohen's is the most scholarly, the culmination of decades of dedicated work, and is illustrated with more than 100 of Carroll's photographs and drawings, including the remaining girl-nudes.
Bakewell, Michael. Lewis Carroll - A Biography. London. Heinemann, 1996.
Cohen, Morton. Lewis Carroll - A Biography. Knopf, 1995.
In his photography he became the master photographer of Victorian children. He excelled at photographing little girls, especially nude or "semi-draped". Alice Liddell, one of the three daughters of the dean of Christ Church, was one of his photographic subjects, the model for the fictional Alice, and the great love of his life. Later, for unknown reasons, he gave up photography, and much of his photographic archive was destroyed after his death. Only a handful of the girl nudes are known to survive.
For recent scholarly work on his photography of girls, see:
Mavor, Carol. 'Dream Rushes - Lewis Carroll's photographs of the little girl'. IN: Nelson, Cladia. and Vallone, Lynne. The Girl's Own - cultural histories of the anglo-American girl, 1830-1915. Athens and London. University of Georgia Press, 1994. ISBN 0820316156. (Pages 156-193. 15 illustrations - several 'undraped', bibliography.)
Smith, L.
Take Back Your Mink - Lewis Carroll, child
masquerade and the age-of-consent.
ART HISTORY, vol.16, Spring 1993, pp.369-385. Bibliography, illustrations.
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Even having given up his photography, being the author of a world-famous book opened up other avenues. On
seaside holidays would befriend little girls by the score, and spend time sketching them on the
beaches at Eastbourne, Whitby, and Sandown.
Left is his sketch of Gertrude Chataway on the beach at Sandown. He first met her when she was nine. He fell in love with Gertrude, and photographed her nude. She was perhaps his greastest child-love after Alice Liddell, and it was to her that he dedicated 'The Hunting of The Snark'. They remained friends as she grew up - as happened with many of his later child friends - and were still holidaying at the seaside together when Gertrude was in her late twenties. |
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