jbf@ccieng5.UUCP (Jens Bernhard Fiederer) (04/28/84)
Has anybody heard about the hypothesis that Queeen Victoria used Lewis Carroll's name to cover the Alice books, which are actually autobiographical? Azhrarn -- "Some people are eccentric, but I am just plain odd" Reachable as ....allegra![rayssd,rlgvax]!ccieng5!jbf
ljdickey@watmath.UUCP (Lee Dickey) (04/28/84)
That is quite a fantasy! Better check out "The Annotated Alice"
by Martin Gardiner before you push that one much farther.
Indeed, Lewis Carroll is a nom de plume, for a certain Rev. Dobson,
who was known to like little girls.
--
Lee Dickey, University of Waterloo. (ljdickey@watmath.UUCP)
... {allegra, decvax} !watmath!ljdickeybobr@zeus.UUCP (Robert Reed) (04/30/84)
All Things Considered had an article this last week about a couple of people who did statistical studies of Victoria's and Charles Dobson's writings, and have come to the conclusion that Dobson lent his penname to the Queen for the purpose of publishing her allegorical personal memoirs. -- Robert Reed, Tektronix Logic Design Systems, tektronix!teklds!bobr
mauney@ncsu.UUCP (Jon Mauney) (04/30/84)
[the line softly and suddenly vanished away,
for the Usenet's a Boojum, you see.]
I have not read anything directly written by the proponents of the
Queen Victoria/Lewis Carroll theory, all I know is what I read in
the newspaper and hear on the radio. Nevertheless, I am willing to
take a stand and proclaim that I find the arguments very dubious.
As I understand it, there are three broad classes of reasons for
believing that the "Alice" books were written by Queen Victoria and
published under the penname of an obscure Oxford mathematician:
1) Computerized text analysis of the books, compared with
Victoria's acknowledged diaries. Most frequently mentioned
are the use of the word "very" and the use of italics or
underlining for emphasis.
2) Parallels between characters in the books and persons in
Victoria's life.
3) The fact that the Alice books are clearly better than other
stories written by Dodgson.
Being a fan of the Reverend Dodgson, but no scholar on the subject,
I answer thusly:
1) I have never trusted text analysis, especially simple signatures
like the frequency of underlining. The ancient and honorable
debate over the authorship of Shakespeare's plays used, in part,
the finding of secret codes in the manuscript -- the contemporary
technological equivalent of computer analysis. An author of
a secret codes book that I read in Junior High pointed out that
using similar techniques he could prove that those plays were
written by a variety of people, including himself. While I realize
I was more impressionable in Jr Hi than I am now, I am still inclined
to believe that statement; given the ability to pick and choose
assumptions and facts, one can prove anything.
2) Ignoring the possibilities of coincidence and of the researchers
seeing what they wanted to see, I think it is not unlikely nor
surprising that there are resemblances to royal relatives.
Carroll threw in lots of topical references, and after all,
Victoria was Queen and Carroll had reason to know about her life.
A more telling question: how did Victoria know enough to put in
all those references to math, people at Oxford, and the Liddell
family?
3) While it is true that "Sylvie and Bruno" would be forgotten if they
weren't published under the name Lewis Carroll, Carroll wrote
lots of stuff in the same vein, beginning when he was a schoolboy.
One wonders if Victoria has the same reputation. One also wonders
what the alleged status of Jabberwocky is. Is the Queen supposed
to have written it, or did they throw in a bit of Carroll's verse
to make it look more like Carroll actually wrote "Looking Glass" ?
Carroll published a preliminary version of Jabberwocky years before
the Alice books came out, so it seems doubtful that Victoria wrote
that poem.
4) Alice Liddell and her sisters really existed. The Alice books are
supposed to have grown out of a story Dodgson made up on a boating
trip. With all the real live people who would have been party to
such a hoax, you would expect to find some leaks, some mention
in a diary like "today I received a letter from HRH asking me to
confirm that CLD told a ridiculous story about a rabbit to A
while we were all on a picnic. As if I would ever get into the
same boat with that dirty old man! But with all my faults, I love
my Queen, so I'll do it."
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is a reasonably well known historical figure.
His prose, poetry, puzzles, and photos all show the same wit and fondness
for little girls. I see little reason to suspect ghostwriting.
(This whole thing is probably a massive joke, to make people like me waste
our time defending our hero, when we should be grading final exams.)
--
_Doctor_ Jon Mauney, mcnc!ncsu!mauney
\__Mu__/ North Carolina State Universityignatz@ihuxx.UUCP (Dave Ihnat, Chicago, IL) (05/01/84)
Yes, I heard a radio article on WBEZ (the Chicago Public Radio
station) concerning this. Specifically, Dr. Dobson has been alleged
to have worked as a ghost-writer for Queen Victoria by a small
group of 'researchers' at some college. (This being radio, and my
being on the Eisenhower destruction zone at the time, I forget the
peoples' names or the institution sponsoring them; contact WBEZ if
you're really interested.) Their criteria for this belief:
-Most first stories are autobiographical; 'Alice' clearly wouldn't be
for Dobson, but would fit quite well for Queen V.
-Most autobiographical first stories include characters from real
life; several from 'Alice' fit for Queen V., esp. the White Rabbit
for her father, the Duke of Wellington (He died when Queen V. was
some weeks old, so she, in the estimation of these worthies, would
see him as having only the function of breeding to produce her--and
rabbitts are good at breeding), and the Red Queen, who was supposed
to be her scheming mother.
-They did a computer study on--get this--the frequency of the use of
the word 'very' in 'Alice', and in the Queen's diary. They found a
rate of incidence for the two that exactly matched! (Gosh, it came
from a computer, don't y'know, so, like, it's GOT to be right...)
All in all, *I* found the conclusion far-fetched, the conjectures just
that, and their 'computer analysis' pitiable. And a representative of
an organization that was something on the order of the Baker's Street
Irregulars, but dedicated to the works of Dobson, felt the same way--I
think, were I one of these people proposing the theory, I'd rather have
stood under Thin Man in August, '45 rather than face this guy's
rebuttal.
All requests for more info > ${WBEZ Chicago}
Dave Ihnat
ihuxx!ignatzpcf@drux3.UUCP (05/01/84)
"Eat me" > Lewis Carroll is a nom de plume, for a certain Rev. Dobson, > who was known to like little girls. > -- The idea of VR (Victoria Regina) writing Alice is clearly rubbish. But who is this Dobson character? What evidence exists to show that HE had anything to do with Alice? You are probably thinking of Charles L. Dodgson famous mathemetician and photographer. He did like photographing young girls (nude even (not him, the girls you fool!)) but only with the permission and presence of parents. Everything in the best possible taste. CLD wrote at least one book of mathematical puzzles and also some poems. Mostly extremely dull (or at least dated, a little too topical). Alice existed (as did her sisters) and was Alice Liddel, hence puns (and acrostics) in the Alice books about telling the story to the 'little girls'. "... and it really was a kitten after all." Peter Fry drux3!pcf