Following on from my earlier post about naming myself, I thought I’d do a little series of posts about naming. I’ll start with a subject I’ve been thinking and reading about for some time: Lewis Carroll, and, specifically, the various ways in which biographers have approached the problems presented by his pseudonym.

To start with, let’s remind ourselves of Michel Foucault’s essay, ‘What is an Author?’, which asserts that “The author’s name is not … just a proper name like the rest.” The attribution of authorship, Foucault decides, is “characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society”, pointing out that “A private letter may well have a signer – it does not have an author”. In the case of Lewis Carroll, the pseudonym under which Charles L. Dodgson wrote some of his works, this kind of distinction causes difficulties, and shows the extent to which the simple act of naming serves to transform and interpret the facts at a biographer’s disposal.

Polarising Man and Author

The bibliography of Florence Becker Lennon’s Lewis Carroll (1947) distinguishes between “Works by Lewis Carroll” and “Works by Charles L. Dodgson”, and Derek Hudson makes a similar distinction in his biography of Carroll (1976). Implicit here is a separation of life and works, and a polarisation of two aspects of Dodgson’s personality. Initially this seems appropriate enough, given that Dodgson himself made the decision to write under a pseudonym. The difficulties arise when we ask ourselves exactly where the line between Dodgson and Carroll ought to be drawn. As Foucault has said, a private letter does not have an author, and yet there exists a book entitled The Letters of Lewis Carroll. Who is the author of this book?

Part of the problem here is the very idea of “publication”, whereby previously private documents are made public, thereby transforming their status as texts. It is in private letters and diaries that biographers often hope to find the ‘facts’ that they so much desire, but the transformation caused by publication also alters the way in which such documents function as evidence. What was previously signed “Charles L. Dodgson” now has the stamp of “Lewis Carroll” on it, and suddenly the distinction between man and author in which many of Carroll’s biographers invest so much faith becomes somewhat problematic.

Two Versions of the Transformation from Dodgson to Carroll

The naming process has an important impact on the narratives of these biographies. Jackie Wullschläger, who refers to her subject as “Carroll” throughout her biographical essay in Inventing Wonderland (2001), describes the development of the pseudonym as a transformation of self, and an important development in the genesis of the Alice books: “He had already become Lewis Carroll; everything was set for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The verb “become” connects naming with identity, implying that the Alice books could not possibly have been written until Dodgson had transformed himself into Carroll.

Conversely, Lennon represents the incident as a division of self, writing that “His public mind and his private one were now on their way to taking up separate residence.”

But both versions of the re-naming process are actually a distortion of the facts, describing the ‘transformation’ as a wilful action on Dodgson’s part. Hudson emphasises the role of Edmund Yates, editor of The Train, in which Dodgson was first published under the pseudonym:

The first of several pieces to appear in The Train was the poem ‘Solitude’ … which he had written three years before. He submitted it under the mysterious initials ‘B.B.’, but this form of signature did not please Yates, who asked him to choose a nom de plume.

Hudson recounts how Dodgson submitted a number of alternatives, of which “Lewis Carroll” was eventually chosen by Yates. The omission of this fact by Lennon and Wullschläger serves to fictionalise the event, depicting a complete, conscious and wilful polarisation of Dodgson the man and Carroll the writer. Hudson’s account tempers our understanding of the process, suggesting that while Dodgson did deliberately write under a pseudonym, the ‘birth’ of “Lewis Carroll” as a separate entity was perhaps not a conscious part of his agenda.

While the act of naming inevitably involves interpretation, the emphasis on facts in biography often means that biographers are tempted to say too much about the distinction between Dodgson and Carroll. One detects a need to categorise, to tidy up the difficulties in the distinction in a way that does not tally with the haphazard nature of real life. For example, Lennon refers to “Dodgson” whenever talking about the man himself, and “Carroll” when discussing any actions taken relating to the works. But on one page, we are told that Dodgson paid the £148 that John Tenniel asked in return for illustrating Alice, and on the next, “Carroll told Harry Furniss he had not liked any of Tenniel’s drawings except Humpty Dumpty”. The attempt to make a precise distinction between Carroll and Dodgson results, in Lennon’s account, in confusion.

The “Myth” of Lewis Carroll

In the opening of In the Shadow of the Dreamchild (1999), Karoline Leach parodies the conventions of biography:

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born on 27 January 1832. He died on 14 January 1898. “Lewis Carroll” was born on 1 March 1856, and is still very much alive.

Leach goes on to criticise the fact that earlier treatments of Dodgson have “been devoted primarily to a potent mythology surrounding the name ‘Lewis Carroll’, rather than the reality of the man, Dodgson.” While Leach undeniably has grounds for taking issue with the Carroll biographers, I would suggest that she is as guilty of playing the name game as are those she attacks. While Lennon suggests a division of self, and Wullschläger describes a transformation from Dodgson to Carroll, Leach represents the two as completely different people, as though “Lewis Carroll” is not just one aspect of Dodgson’s personality, but a completely separate entity with a different date of birth. As much as there is a “potent mythology surrounding the name ‘Lewis Carroll’”, it is unavoidable that “Lewis Carroll”, and the works written under this name, form part of how we perceive the historical entity, Charles L. Dodgson. Inscribed on Dodgson’s tomb are the words, “REV. CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON (LEWIS CARROLL)”, so that even in death, “Lewis Carroll” forms a necessary part of how the man is perceived.

This brief survey of how various biographers choose to name their subject indicates that the very act of assembling information automatically means that we are dealing with more than just facts. Although it is arguably possible to pinpoint, using factual evidence, the date on which Dodgson first used the pseudonym “Lewis Carroll”, we have seen that this factual information can be employed to very different effect when manifested in a biography.