Alice in the Underground: Lewis Carroll and Alice in Modern Culture

This is a factual book and centers on the topic of sex and young girls as it related to Charles Dodgson. It notes that sex with young girls revolves around breeding and raising one's ego. The most important thing, though, is that attitudes about this vary with the times.

Thus, the photos he took of nude young girls were, at the time, considered normal. The Victorians tended to use such photos in greeting cards. The nude young girls were considered asexual and pure, or at least that's what some people claimed.

Thus, at the time, Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll was just a photographer taking photos of nude young girls but in today's world with its changed attitudes some claim this proves he was a closet pedophile.

At the time in England there was a lot of child prostitution.

When he was going to take a photo of a nude young girl he always got the parent's permission first. There is no evidence at all that any of the girls he took photos of considered him to be anything more than just a photographer. Still, people talk and this did cause problems for him. There was also the question of whether he was after sex with one of the young girls or sex with the mother or sex with the governess (which, again, there is no actual evidence for.)

It discusses how he gave up photography in 1880. This book says he might have been too busy but another book I read said he was upset with the changes made in how to take photographs and develop them.

The book also notes that some of those photos showing nude young girls, especially full-frontal ones, were probably not taken by him at all but someone else did and they were claimed to be his.

It points out how psychology can cast it's own light on Alice in Wonderland with some interpreting the normal size door as a woman and the small doors as a young girl. The key was a phallic symbol. (I've also read where the rabbit hole was a symbol for the vagina. You could claim the white rabbit is a symbol for sex and Alice's long neck -in the pigeon part- was also a phallic symbol. We see what we want to see in things.)

The photo of Alice kissing Dodgson is a fake.

In the 1960's drugs were tied in to the story, especially with the caterpillar and his hookah.

In the present world there is the Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, songs like White Rabbit by Jeferson Airplane, various x-rated versions (books, animation and at least one movie). Then there's Alice in Acid-land and Curious Alice (they are both on You Tube).

The book also discusses various other men involved with photos and artwork of young girls.

So when we say that such a thing as taking nude photos of young girls is totally wrong that is a reflection of our current attitudes. Attitudes in the past were different at times. Actually, girls tended to marry (and presumably have sex) when they were around12 or so. This book is interesting both in the way this relates to Charles Dodgson and in the way this reflects attitude change over time.