The idea that Dodgson was probably pedophilic, in desire if not in action, developed from the mistaken belief that he had no interest in adult relationships and focused all his energies on what he called his ''child friends'. The belief arose principally from the fact that his first biographer, his nephew Stuart Collingwood deliberately suppressed the evidence for his uncle's relationships with women. In the late 19th C, there was little conception of pedophilia, and a man associating with children was considered to be 'innocent' and saintly, which were the values his family wanted to be associated with the author of Alice. So, his nephew simply ignored most of the evidence for his uncle's woman-friendships and even implied, without stating, that many of the women he corresponded with and associated with were actually 'child-friends'. This elision and implication was accepted unquestioningly by subsequent biographers, and even developed further, all the while with almost no regard for the actual evidence.

In an attempt to correct the mythology, Hugues Lebailly has pointed out that Carroll's relationship with female children has to be understood within the paradigm of the Victorian Cult of the Child

The situation was further complicated by the growing mythology surrounding Dodgson's relationship with 'the real Alice', Alice Liddell.