The Annotated Alice: the definitive edition
Lewis Carroll, with an introduction by Martin Gardner Allen Lane, The Penguin Press
The problem is that Gardner’s own analysis of Carroll proceeds via a false syllogism (a misapplication of logic that doubtless his subject – a pedantic and second-rate Oxford mathematics don – would have approved in his own defence, if not in his tutorials). For Gardner: a) all paedophiles manifestly wish to have sex with their objects of desire; b) there is no evidence that Carroll wished to have sex with Alice Liddell or his numerous other “child loves”; therefore, c) Carroll was not a paedophile.
New Statesman – Book Reviews