THE LIFE OF LEWIS CARROLL - 1932

AUTHOR: Langford Reed

Written by a 'humorist' and 'children's writer', this is a distillation of Collingwood's biography, with Reed's own very personal ideas tacked on. He tried to contact Dodgson's family, but they refused to grant him any access to private papers - a policy they would continue for another fifty years or so. Reed, however, was unfazed and simply made up his own version of Lewis Carroll's life. The fact Dodgson had a nom de plume and sometimes changed the colour of the ink he used was enough to convince Reed he had a split personality. Reed insisted on calling one half of this imagined duo 'Professor Dodgson' (even though he wasn't) - because Reed thought he 'ought to have been one'. Reed was also the first to make the totally spurious claim that all of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached puberty, and added the slightly insane refinement that Dodgson preferred to deal with adult women by mail rather than meeting them in person. He produced no evidence for this claim, and indeed he couldn't, because he had made it all up. But that didn't stop it becoming a 'fact' for many subsequent generations.

SOUNDBITE:

Completely barking mad

IMPACT AND INFLUENCE:

Highly influential. The whole modern image of Carroll can be traced to this book more than any other single source.