The idea that Dodgson was pedophilic, in desire if not in action, developed from both an ignorance of what has been called the Victorian Child Cult and 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. To promote this image, his nephew manipulated the evidence and even implied, without stating, that many of the women Carroll associated with were actually 'child-friends'. This was accepted unquestioningly by subsequent biographers, and even developed further, all the while with almost no regard for the actual evidence. None of this, of course, proves he was not pedophilic, because that is impossible, but it does show that the supposed reasons for believing him to be so were at best confused and at worst entirely false.

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