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The Raven, the Writing-Desk and the Reports: a Sesquicentennial Tale of Nonsense and Law Report Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2015

Alison Million
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Abstract

In the 150th anniversary year of both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the inception of the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting (ICLR) this article by Alison Million considers any possible common contemporaneous connections between their authors. It makes particular reference to Lewis Carroll's legal associations and his fascination with the processes of law, considering to what extent these may have influenced Alice. In briefly reviewing ICLR history and the instigating factors behind reform it looks at the requisite skills needed finally to devise a successful scheme and any potential overlap between those and some of Lewis Carroll's many subject disciplines. The article concludes that just as the law helped shape Alice, so has Alice contributed to English case law by providing a descriptor for “perfect nonsense”.

Keywords

law reportingIncorporated Council of Law Reporting for England & WalesLewis CarrollAlice in Wonderland
Type
Feature Article
Information
Legal Information Management , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 2015 , pp. 210 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015. Published by British and Irish Association of Law Librarians 

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References

Footnotes

1 Cohen, Morton N. (1995) Lewis Carroll: a biography Macmillan. xvi.

2 The Mad Hatter asks Alice, “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?” but is unable to answer the riddle himself. Carroll, Lewis. (1865) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Macmillan Children's Books, 2015. 87 The riddle has often been subject to discussion including by Francis Huxley (1976) The raven and the writing desk. Thames & Hudson.

3 Winchester, Simon. (2011) The Alice Behind Wonderland. Oxford University Press. 58.

4 Nelson, William (1718) The Reports and Entries of Sir Edward Lutwyche, Kt.

5 Holborn, Guy. The Old Law Reporters in The Law Reports 1865–2015 Anniversary Edition. Magrath, Paul (ed). ICLR. 2015. 29.

6 Green, Roger Lancelyn. “Mrs. Shawyer's Reminiscences” in The Diaries of Lewis Carroll Volume 1, 1855–67. Cassell & Company Ltd., 1953. xxiv.

7 Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert (2015) The Story of Alice. Harvill Secker. 37.

8 Carroll, Lewis (1879) Doublets. A word-puzzle. Macmillan & Co.

9 Carroll, Lewis (1887) The Game of Logic. Macmillan & Co.

10 Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge (1896) Symbolic Logic Part 1, Part II published posthumously.

11 Daniel, W.T.S. (1884) Scheme of Reporting Recommended by the Committee in The History and Origin of the Law Reports. William Clowes & Sons. 151–157.

12 Daniel, W.T.S. (1884) The History and Origin of the Law Reports. William Clowes & Sons. 161.

13 Winchester, Simon, op. cit. 58.

14 Wordsworth, William. (1807) From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood published in Poems, in Two Volumes.

15 Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert, op. cit. 80.

16 Green, Roger Lancelyn, op. cit. Diary Entry 25 June 1864.

17 Ibid. Diary Entry 6 July 1864.

18 Edward Wakeling, a Lewis Carroll Collector, Consultant, Researcher and Writer has kindly provided details of known letters between Dodgson and George Denman as follows: 1 Collingwood, Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll 2. Cohen and Green, The Letters of Lewis Carroll 3 The Berol Collection, New York University Library 4. Wakeling, Lewis Carroll's Diaries.

19 Daniel, W.T.S. (1884) Op. cit. 210–11.

20 Ibid. 146.

21 Hargreaves, Alice (Liddell) The Friendship that sparked “Alice's Adventures”. In Lewis Carroll: Interviews and Recollections (1989) ed. Cohen, Morton N. The Macmillan Press Limited.

22 Winchester, Simon op. cit. (2011) The Alice Behind Wonderland. Oxford University Press. 87.

23 Hargreaves, Alice. Alice's Recollections of Carrollian Days, as Told to her Son, Caryl Hargreaves. Cornhill Magazine, 73, (July 1832), 1–12. Reproduced in Lewis Carroll: Interviews and Recollections (1989) ed. Cohen, Morton N. The Macmillan Press Limited.

24 Steinbach, Susie L. (2012) Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Routledge. 160.

25 Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert op. cit. 225.

26 Green, Roger Lancelyn, op. cit., Diary Entry 2 March 1865.

27 Douglas-Fairhurst, Robert op.cit. 238.

28 Strong, Thomas Banks “Mr. Dodgson” Lewis Carroll at Oxford. The Times, January 27, 1932.

29 Templeman, The Rt Hon Lord MBE. Foreword to the first edition. In (2013) Holland, James & Webb, Julian Learning Legal Rules. 8ed. Oxford University Press.

30 Carroll, Lewis. (1865) op. cit. 129.

31 Ibid. 142.

32 Ibid. 29.

33 Cohen, Morton N. op. cit. 142.

34 [1 Bla. Com., 63–78].

35 Carroll, Lewis. op. cit. 61.

36 Ibid. 8.

37 Ibid. 111.

38 Ibid. 161.

39 Ibid. 114.

40 Ibid. 26.

41 Ibid. 31.

42 Ibid. 43.

43 Carroll, Lewis (1897) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: And Through the Looking Glass. Macmillan. 68.

44 [1964] A.C. 465.

45 Carroll, Lewis (1865) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Macmillan Children's Books, 2015. 82.

46 Ibid. 10.

47 Ibid. 17.

48 Carroll, Lewis (1885) A Tangled Tale. Macmillan.

49 Daniel, W.T.S. (1884) The History and Origin of the Law Reports. William Clowes & Sons.

50 Ibid. 2.

51 I am most grateful to Andrew Pearson, Counsel at 7 King's Bench Walk, for the translation and for the following: Daniel takes his line from Virgil's Aeneid 1.203, “forsan et haec olim mininisse iuvabit”, said by Aeneas to his followers after the fall of Troy and their difficult ocean passage. The hope is that “one day we'll look back on this and smile” (a loose translation which circumvents the grammatical awkwardness of the Latin future perfect). The use of “J” in Latin was for a long time an acknowledged practice:- Daniel's misquotation, however, loses Virgil's famous hexameter and calls into question whether he himself was much of a classicist.

52 Slater v May 2 Ld. Raymond 1072 (1704).

53 Blackstone 1 Bl. Com. 71, 72.

54 The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition 1989 Volume XII gives an illustration of the word “prolix” from Grote Plato I. vi. 237 which is also dated 1865: “They are intolerant of all that is prolix, circuitous, not essential to the proof of the thesis in hand.”.

55 Daniel,W.T.S. op. cit. 111.

56 Lindley, Nathaniel (1885) The History of the Law Reports. (1885) LQR 137 at 138.

57 Daniel, W.T.S. op. cit., 94.

58 http://www.iclr.co.uk/assets/media/ICLR-annual-lecture-transcript-2005-Of_Good_Report.pdf

59 Daniel, W.T.S. op. cit. 35.

60 Ibid. 37.

61 Ibid. 34.

62 The Reporting System (1848) The Law Review and Quarterly Journal of British and Foreign Jurisprudence Vol. VII 528.

63 Daniel, W.T.S. op. cit. 4.

64 Ibid. 14.

65 Pen and ink sketches in chancery…by a lounger in the courts 1 [1866] 6.

66 Daniel, W.T.S. op. cit. 23–26.

67 Ibid. 28–63.

68 Ibid. 63–67.

69 Ibid. 72–77.

70 Ibid. 73.

71 Ibid. 75.

72 Ibid. 80–81.

73 Ibid. 99–136.

74 Ibid. 131.

75 Ibid. 162.

76 See 11 above.

77 Daniel, W.T.S. op. cit. 208–212.

78 Lindley, Nathaniel (1885) The History of the Law Reports. (1885) LQR 137 at 138.

79 Ibid.

80 Cohen, Morton N. op. cit. 250.

81 Green, Roger Lancelyn op. cit. Lewis Carroll enjoyed devising schemes such as one suggested in his diary entry for 27 January 1865 regarding the management of the arrival and departure of carriages at Covent Garden.

82 Abeles, Francine (2001) The Political Pamphlets and Letters of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Related Pieces: A Mathematical Approach. Charlottesville: Lewis Carroll Society of North America.

83 See 64 above.

84 As far as I have managed to find [1960] AC 36 is the first reference. The following link suggests a reference in an 1890 Law Quarterly Review. The well known Lewis Carroll quote on the meaning of words given by Lord Atkin in Liversidge v Anderson [1942] A.C. 206 is from Through the Looking Glass which was first published in 1871. http://comparativelawblog.blogspot.co.uk/2006/12/humpty-dumpty-and-law.html

85 Allen v Sir Alfred McAlpine & Sons Ltd. [1968] 2 QB 229.

86 Spurling's Wills Trust, Re [1966] 1 WLR 920.

87 Furniss (Inspector of Taxes v Dawson) [1984] AC 474.

88 Oxfordshire County Council v Oxford City Council and another [2006] 2 AC 674.