Father Inire's photo album

From: "William H. Ansley" <wansley at warwick.net> Mantis>> Happily, Inire seems to be just enamoured by little exultantesses, and there Mantis>> is no evidence of his actually molesting them. Boy, wouldn't that be an Mantis>> embarassment to the reign of the Autarch Severian.

I guess it depends on how you define "pornography". Dodgson definitely took pictures of naked little girls. This is not a controversial assertion as far as I know, and this is what Mantis was talking about. D

Yup, I guess it does. I didn't write "Lewis Carroll wasn't a child pornographer despite the fact that he took pictures of naked little girls," not because I wasn't aware of that he took pictures of naked little girls (as well as clothed ones) but because I assumed that the people who read this list would know this fact. Despite the fact that this hobby probably indicates a major kink in Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's personality and sexuality (he never married nor had any kind of sexual relationship, as far as anyone knows), the fact remains that the Victorian fashion at the time to idealize small children as completely pure and innocent beings made it easy to present his photographs as Art. Dodgson never put his nude photographs on public display, was very selective in who he let view them, never published them and requested that all the nude photographs be destroyed after his death, which they were. Dodgson always asked permission of parents before he photographed their daughters in the nude (although he might play word games if the parents didn't directly tell him not to) and he never photographed a little girl in the nude who was at all unwilling that he do so. I think the above statements disqualify Dodgson as a child pornographer. While I certainly don't find this aspect of Dodgson's artistic endeavors to be particularly appealing, I object to seeing him branded as something he was not. If my arguments seem unconvincing, well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. This discussion thread is by now completely off topic and I have no intention of contributing any more messages to it. William Ansley