The Circumstances in which Rev. C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) Wrote His Three Pamphlets

Abstract

Publications on committees, elections and proportionate representation. The Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–98), whose stories and verse appeared over the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, at one stage in his life wrote extensively on committees, elections and proportionate representation. Owing to the importance of Dodgson’s work and the interest attaching to his character, his three main pamphlets are reprinted in the following appendix. We will list his main publications on the subject, all now either scarce or very rare. Fuller bibliographical details will be found in the Handbook of the Literature of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (Oxford, 1931), by Sidney Herbert Williams and Falconer Madan (late Bodley’s Librarian), a work which is the product of the most ripe scholarship and love of its subject and which is a perfect model of its kind.

The present chapter may not seem in keeping with the earlier ones, for it gives a description of the circumstances in which the Rev. C. L. Dodgson wrote his three papers on elections and committees, whereas the earlier chapters recount only the theories of the authors concerned. The discrepancy, however, is apparent rather than real, for the writer did attempt to discover any circumstances which might have had an influence on the theories of Borda and Condorcet; but even a fairly sustained attempt yielded no more than the meagre details recorded above. In the case of Dodgson the same inquiry met with a better fortune.