It is my one recreation and I think it should be done well

April 21, 2016 3:01 PM

Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson when he wasn't teaching at Oxford or writing fiction under the name Lewis Carroll was an avid photographer. Over 200 of his images originally contained in five of his personal albums are collected at the UofT Harry Ransom Center whom have posted 47 of them online in the Lewis Carroll Photography Collection .
posted by Mitheral (13 comments total)

Thanks for this; he was a wonderful photographer, though some of his images are creepy by our standards. This should be a direct link to the "Browse all items" page. (Incidentally, according to the BBC Pronouncing Dictionary of British Names Carroll’s surname, Dodgson, is properly pronounced [ˈdɒdsən] – “Not [dɒdʒ-] (doj-), as one might expect” – and thus the same as my name, Dodson, so I used to tell people he was a distant cousin. Both surnames are from Dodge, an old nickname of Roger.)
posted by languagehat at 3:32 PM on April 21, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't think any of the 47 viewable photos are "creepy." No need to pearl-clutch over the ones at the link.
posted by Ideefixe at 5:28 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

The wonderful collections at the HRC are one of the reasons why people shouldn't encourage Texas secessionists.
posted by TedW at 5:30 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

There are creepier ones (possibly speculatively) attributed to him.
posted by BungaDunga at 5:42 PM on April 21, 2016

IDK, the "let's play dress up" aspect of some of the photos in this collection are suspect on a number of different levels, particularly considering some of the speculations about him having been a pedophile. I mean, he's got the girls pretending to be Turks and "China Men". That's problematic enough on its own.
posted by Hermione Granger at 6:48 PM on April 21, 2016

I mean, isn't pretty much everything about Victorians problematic?
posted by town of cats at 7:35 PM on April 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

My daughter is six. She selected a VERY abridged 1001 Arabian Nights (twenty nights, tops), and demanded we read the whole wife-murdering thing to her (tho women are often the heroes in the stories themselves, especially the one where the brothers are turned into rocks and the heroine saves them, and the one with the powerful and beautiful djinneh makes the ugly djinn admit he's a loser.)

She loved it, and wanted more chapter books, and also Minecraft how-to books, as that's all she watches on YouTube Kids. She plays Minecraft narrating what she's doing to us, declaring it "My Lovely World" as Stampy and Ballistic Squid are household names in our household. "Building Time...!"

So, Geronimo Stilton is a bust. All of her third-grader friends love it, but she can't read it on her own yet, and it's not the same when it's a bedtime story. She doesn't like Kipling's Just So Stories at all. She's seen the Rankin and Bass Hobbit, and NOPE.

Alice in Wonderland - there are more stories than in the movie???!!!???!!! Yes! Yes! Yes!

We almost pulled the trigger on the complete Lewis Carrol collection, except she read the word "Oz." On more than one very thick book.

Dorothy in Oz books one thru 5 it is. There are more Oz books to follow! But first! The Minecraft book detailing the recipes for making lava buckets and diamond armor. And the latest Geronimo Stilton hardback so she can impress her 8 year old friends.

But she stlll angles for the Lewis Carrol collection.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:46 PM on April 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

Didn't the BBC fire this guy? If not, why?
posted by valkane at 8:52 PM on April 21, 2016

Huh? Is there a joke there I am missing? Dodgson predated the BBC by quite a stretch. Heck he died before the advent of broadcast radio.
posted by Mitheral at 9:31 PM on April 21, 2016

Slap*Happy: "she stlll angles for the Lewis Carrol collection."

Carroll's stuff is all in the public domain; if she uses a e-reader you can download them from Gutenberg.
posted by Mitheral at 9:34 PM on April 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

And now we come to why Barnes and Noble still manages to exist at all. She has grown up with both an iPad and us reading books to her, and books she can page through to find the illustrations. I am of a generation who sees no functional difference between an e-book and an actual book, she is of a generation that does. That Geronimo Stilton hardback cost a whole lot, let me tell you. The thickness of the Oz 1-5 tome played a role in her decision.

Amazingly, the books are doing all right.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:43 PM on April 21, 2016

> No need to pearl-clutch over the ones at the link.

Please retire the tired word "pearl-clutch," which in the first place doesn't apply to what I wrote and in the second place is just a shitty way to express yourself. Thanks!
posted by languagehat at 7:05 AM on April 22, 2016

Smithsonian Mag on Dodgson's reputation as a pedophile.

Briefly: At the time, even nudes of children were seen as unsexualized avatars of innocence; cod Freudianism in the '30s made him out as a letch; recent scholarship (including his full diary and many letters) imply that he was actually using hanging out with children as an excuse to court their governesses.

I had heard, but am unable to source it now, that after a child abuse scare Dodgson burned many of his photos, especially nudes of children. How apocryphal that is, I'm not able to say at the moment.
posted by klangklangston at 10:54 AM on April 22, 2016 [2 favorites]