Talk:Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

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1

How much of the "slender and handsome in a soft-focused dreamy sort of way" text is copied from Karoline Leach? And can we get her to contribute her text to us under GPL? [1] --Ed Poor 13:09, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• Biography compiled by the webmaster © carrollmyth.com/lewiscarroll.cc

NB:You are welcome to use this material under the stipulations of 'FAIR USE', but please cite the source. [2]

Not sure how much we can quote as "fair use". --Ed Poor 13:26, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately I have to agree. Were it a WP import it would not be even near to being live. Since I firmly believe that CZ content should not be copied -- even if this import is allowed by copyright -- it should not be left as it is. If copyright is no issue, it could get status 4 (without WP credit, of course), if there are doubts then blanking and adding a stub should be done. --Peter Schmitt 14:58, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Far, far beyond Fair Use

I am appalled by this article. Evidently Meg Ireland brought it in 100% with no attempt to give it attribution or even make a *pass* at calling it "Fair Use". There is no indication anywhere in the article or on the Talk page that she herself did not write it in its entirety. As far as I'm concerned it's out and out plagiarism. Unless someone gives me *very* strong counterarguments, I will be deleting it entirely. Hayford Peirce 00:24, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Good catch Ed. Go ahead and delete it Hayford. Leave the talk page, though. D. Matt Innis 01:26, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Matt. That's enough for me. I'll leave this talk page, however. Hayford Peirce 01:50, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I have spent much of my spare time over the last week, reading online biographies of Charles Dodgson. There's a lot of interested material out there, and even a controversy or two.

Anybody mind if I start over at Charles Dodgson? --Ed Poor 17:28, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome to start there and can even add links and redirects as well. If an editor has a problem with it, I'm sure they'll let you know! D. Matt Innis 17:36, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, please do! The only problem we had with this one was the lack of attribution. Hayford Peirce 17:41, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) It seems (privat mail) we were wrong about the source: It is an WP import where the WP box check did not work (or was forgotten). Whether the WP article is copied from the site we assumed, or vice versa, I do not know (and did not try to check). However, this shows that it is always a good idea to mentiona an import (from whatever source) both in the edit summary and on the talk page. Moreover, the status should have been set to non-live (4). --Peter Schmitt 15:37, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I, too, by private email, learned that WP was the source. I had already done enough checking to see, I think, that the WP article was taken about 100% from the *other* source. There are lotsa lessons to be learned here, I suppose. One of which is what I used to do *years* ago when I first joined CZ and brought in a bunch of articles that I had written at WP. I *checked the box* AND wrote a separate explanation on the Talk page PLUS put in the WP Template that we were using at the time. But in *this* particular case, I think that the *original* source should have been clearly cited. Hayford Peirce 16:58, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Better start the new article as Lewis Carroll

Hi, Ed, a belated thought that other Kops and I have briefly talked about among ourselves -- the new article should be Lewis Carroll, with redirects from Charles Dodgson, the same way we have an article called Mark Twain, with redirects from Samuel Clemens. I'll bet that not one person in a thousand has heard of Dodgson.... Hayford Peirce 18:50, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

It is not quite the same as with Mark Twain because Lewis Carroll published under his real name, too (as mathematician). But it is still probably better at Lewis Carroll. --Peter Schmitt 19:03, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I had forgotten that. Well, let's see. We have Michael Innes, mystery writer, who was *quite* well-known at one time, but was a pen name of J.I.M. Stewart, Oxford prof who wrote both scholarly books AND straight novels under his real name. Let's see what WP does with them. Oh, my, they have a redirect from Innes to Stewart, with the article called Stewart. Very wrong, I would say, but I'm not gonna fight WP's battles.... Hayford Peirce 19:17, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Do I have move powers? If so, I can move it. I only wanted Dodgson because I read that he would leave a party if anyone referred to him as the author of anything he had published under his pen name. He would also return letters with a circular he had printed up, refusing to acknowledge any Lewis Carroll works. It's different from Mark Twain (or John Wayne, for that matter). He wasn't known as Carroll in his social circle.

Anyway, I guess a section about his pen name would also be good to have: how he translated his name into Latin, reversed it and re-anglicized it; which works he published as himself vs. under the L.C. pseudonym. --Ed Poor 19:31, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I have already moved Charles Dodgson to this place, and defined Charles Lutwidge Dodgson/Definition. Perhaps sometime in the future there may be a parallel page on the "other" Lewis Carroll. --Peter Schmitt 19:41, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Outline

Themes I'm planning to add are listed below; this is more in the order I plan to write them (or the importance I feel they have), rather than the order they should be read in:

• how he came to write the Alice books
• early childhood experiences
• interest in photography, which gave him the opportunity to meet artistic and literary celebrities
• depth and breadth of his friendships and acquaintances
• interest in the theater
• decision to take up a career which demanded celibacy
  • interest in academia (esp. math)
  • financial security
  • the position it gave him in "society"
• hesitation or refusal to take holy orders
• writings on social issues
• charitable donations
• ways in which biographers viewed him
  • particularly, the changes in how they viewed his attitude toward children
• academic works
• books, pamphlets and games which made logic or math easier for children to learn
• other books for children: The Nursery Alice, Through the Looking-Glass
• his didactic novel Sylvia and Bruno (which apparently was aimed at adults rather than at children, judging by the numbers of copies he gave away to people older than 17)
• perhaps a bit about the times he lived in (although Victorian Era certainly deserves an article of its own)

I'm not promising to write ALL of this myself, but the topic seems interesting enough - with the Alice (2010) movie out right now. --Ed Poor 20:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Subtle insertions

Re: this addition to the lede, I remember avidly reading Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice which was chock full of ideas like why Looking-glass milk might not be good to drink: turns out some of the organic molecules which form the nutrient's in milk don't metabolize the same way if they're turned right to left (see stereochemistry). Numerous other annotations on science, politics, etc., are in that book; a second edition came out since I left high school. --Ed Poor 18:00, 15 April 2011 (UTC)