491

Charles L. Dodgson

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:5,000.00 - 6,000.00 USD
Charles L. Dodgson

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Auction Date:2014 Jun 18 @ 18:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Lengthy ALS signed “C. L. Dodgson,” totaling five pages, with three pages on adjoining 3.5 x 5.25 sheets and two pages on adjoining 5.75 x 8.75 sheets, December 4, 1894. Letter to Herbert Wilcox. The main letter, three pages, in part: “I return your letter on Political Economy. Also as to the matter you write about—‘responsibility for sin'—I am always inclined, in any puzzling question (an inclination largely due to my 20 years work at Logic), to try to state the thing in a sort of mathematical form. I think it helps greatly to clearness of ideas. So I have given an hour to copying (always a better plan than trying to give the substance of another person’s words) what you have said, and putting my remarks opposite, sentence by sentence. I hope I have made my meaning clear this time. I have tried to show the exact points where we agree, & where we differ; & as to the latter, I think we had better ‘agree to differ,’ for I can give no more time, at present, to the matter." Dodgson’s two-page enclosure of his remarkably thorough responses is included, with Dodgson penning excerpts from Wilcox’s initial letter on the left side and his own responses on the right. The most fascinating is a reply in relation to a statement about who should be responsible for a sin—someone who gives "evil advice" that leads another person to sin, or the person who commits the sin based upon poor advice. Dodgson's lengthy and logical reply, in part: "That responsibility depends wholly upon what the 'offender' has done, in the way of bad advice or example…There are two questions before us, which it may be well to state shortly and clearly. They are…as follows:— Suppose 'A' gives bad advice &c to 'B' and 'C'; & that owing two other causes, 'C' is saved from following it; but 'B' sins. The questions are:—(1) Does the fact that 'A' gave bad advice &c diminish the guilt of 'B'? (To this you & I both answer 'yes'). (2) Does the fact that 'B' sins actually increase the guilt of 'A,' so that he is more guilty as to 'B' than as to 'C'? (To this you say 'yes'; and I say 'no’)." In overall very fine condition.

In addition to his writing, Dodgson was a practiced logician and theologian, frequently using the former to inform the latter, as displayed in this fine letter. In Beatrice Hatch's 1898 biographical sketch of Dodgson for Strand Magazine, she writes, 'Mr. Dodgson did not often preach, yet, when he did, he had the power to impress and captivate his hearers. There was no need for him to write out a sermon. Full of earnestness in his subject, the words came without difficulty. Neither was there any danger of his wandering from the direct point, for before the eye of his ordered and logical mind, his subject would arise in the form of a diagram to be worked out point by point.' His works on logic demonstrate a similar pattern, examining complex subjects point by point and using variable letters to represent his solutions. This love of logic also appears in his literary works, including multiple logic puzzles, mathematical concepts, and riddles appearing throughout his most famous story, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.