The Life of Lewis Carroll - 1954

AUTHOR:

Derek Hudson

This book, in conjunction with the edited Diaries of Lewis Carroll published the previous year, represent a conscious attempt to return the image of Carroll to its pre-Freudian condition of innocence. It is only slightly more accurate than Lennon or Taylor; indeed they are all to some extent re-stating the same basic core of incomplete or even imaginary 'facts'and merely differing in matters of interpretation. In keeping with its 'Apologist' position, seems more comfortable with the idea of Carroll as a naive and virginal would-be pedophile than as a man who may have enjoyed adult experiences of any kind.

SOUNDBITE:

"even if he was a pedophile, do we really have to say so?"

IMPACT AND INFLUENCE:

Highly influential for Carroll-enthusiasts, in fact Hudson's 'Apologist' position became for a long time the received viewpoint of the Lewis Carroll Society and its affiliates. However outside that arena, his influence was rather less, and his rehash of the Victorian story of 'innocence' proved less in tune with the 20th C. public than the Freudian image of 'suppressed pervert'