- Ambiguous: The “Boots” and “the maker of Bonnets and Hoods” in The Hunting of the Snark might be two different persons, but also could be the same person. Thus, the Snark hunting crew might have only nine members, not ten.
- Unproven: The assumption that Carroll was on drugs when he wrote the Alice books.
- Not quite right: The assumption that C.L. Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) invented the word “Snark”.
- Probably wrong: The assumption that the the Snark’s “fondness for bathing-machines” is nonsense. It might be an Oxford Christ Church College insider joke.
- Too often wrong: Carroll quotes (e.g. in the Internet). Check them before a Carroll misquote sticks as a tattoo on your skin.
- Wrong: The assumption that the “Ocean Chart” (the Bellman’s map) in The Hunting of the Snark was made by Henry Holiday.
- Wrong: The claim by rare book sellers that only the first issue of The Hunting of the Snark has “Baker” on page 83.
- Wrong: The assumption that there is photographic evidence that Alice Liddell, as a child, kissed C.L. Dodgson.
- Wrong: The story that C.L. Dodgson sent an admiring Queen Victoria a copy of An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.
Not Lewis Carroll
2019-07-12, updated: 2024-08-30