Great authors invite great speculations. Consider how many people insist that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays!

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) invites another type of speculation, and a much darker sort. Knowing how much time he devoted to being with young girls, the tendency is to see him as some sort of monster.

The counter-arguments are two. One is the stories told by the young girls themselves, almost all of whom praised him; many of them, indeed, told of the moral lessons he taught. The other counter-argument is the artifacts Dodgson left behind -- not just his writings, but his library and his gadgets and his letters. These show a man who indeed lived for children -- but who seems to have seen them not in sexual terms in the true sense of a romantic: As people to serve, to be truthful with, to teach, and to learn from.

This book catalogs one of the largest exhibits of Dodgson artifacts ever assembled, shown at the Pierpont Morgan library in 1982 (the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Dodgson's birth). As such, it isn't a spectacularly exciting read, although there are a few interesting chapters at the beginning. But there is much to be learned. That Dodgson received his copy of The Book of Common Prayer at age seven. That he was given a Bible at thirteen, and apparently continued to use that (out-of-date) translation rather than adopt the English Revised Version that was so much superior. That he wrote letters with all sorts of tricks -- mirror writing, codes, and more.

This book is no replacement for a biography -- indeed, Cohen wrote a biography of Dodgson which is much fuller and more interesting. But if you've read three or four biographies (say, those of Cohen, Woolf, Clark, and Stoffel), then this would be an interesting addition to your collection. ( )