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. Dodgson's family refused - as usual - to grant him any access to private papers. Reed, however, was unfazed and simply made up his own version of Lewis Carroll's life, inventing amongst other things, the entire idea of a split personality, based on nothing but the fact Dodgson used different colored inks from time to time. 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, sadly, 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.