My father used to tell me a story of his youth in the 1920s. He studied at Christchurch because of the family connection to the college. Dad wanted to follow his ancestor and make a name for himself in mathematics but had nothing original to say so went into medicine instead.

Years ago I visited Oxford and was given the great honour of dining at Christchurch’s high table. This was a particular privilege because of the sense of validation in my relationship with my ancestor.

I have lived my life with this association and I have never known exactly how to react to people’s views on Dodgson. On the one hand is the whimsy and delight of the Alice stories. But to others, there is a darkness about Dodgson’s subject matter for his photography. As an aside, there is precious little discussion of his significant contribution to mathematics.

From my own research, Dodgson’s photographic techniques were groundbreaking and the appropriateness or otherwise of his subject matter is simply a matter of opinion.

For what it is worth, Alice Liddell’s family seemed to have an opinion that it was not appropriate and thus succeeded in planting an element of innuendo into the interpretation of Dodgson’s behaviour. This seems more a reflection on Victorian morality rather than anything else.

Good luck with your work.
Charles Dodgson

David, thanks for your wishes and the best to you for the new year.

Sadi, As far as I know we have absolutely no contact with the Dogdson estate but as I said before I have to check with my mother because she is the one who tracks all the family history and contacts. If anything comes up I will get back to you.

s.

What i have done is the following; for work that is *original* and owned by institutions, not by me, then i am paying them to photograph or scan the piece, but they are kindly not charging me any rate to use the piece in the finished book.

So you see, they are charging me for the reproduction of the image (which seems fair enough) but not for the actual image itself (the rights to use it).

The whole *word * thing is very confusing and yes, as you note, a standard stock answer. I think it would be far easier if i simply sent a list with page numbers stating explicitly what i plan to use. But NO. They don’t want that. So then this leaves the question, What do they want?

I mean only to do well by the Estate with the utmost respect, of course and will and have, but the idea that i should have to pay for his own words seems rather absurd to me, since, as everyone has pointed out, if i understand, the copyright has ran out on those works a long time ago… it makes no sense to me. I should be able to use as much as i want. God in heaven, whole copies of Alice in Wonderland have been republished with new illustrations!

Hardly what i am doing…

this is a most helpful discussion

sadi (ranson-polizzotti)
http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com

Even if Sadi were willing to take that risk, anyone downstream (publisher, printer, distributor, reseller) may not, and may refuse to handle her work if she does not have licenses.

The point I would like to make, that could help future authors, is that if the Rights Office system was in place every item of a work would be uniquely identified and registered and so it would be abundantly clear when the work pases into the public domain or who was the legal rights holder. Just one of the benefits of a system that would take copyright into the digital age.

Good luck with the book.

If you want something a little more authoritative, refer to Cornell’s Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States.

Now, if you are not satisfied with the quality of reproduction of the illustrations in the book-in-hand, then you can certainly see if some entity possesses the original art work. In this case, you may have to license to use their art work since they own the hardcopy. They might even own the copyright to the originals (see the Cornell chart for unpublished works.) But such copyright claim does NOT extend to any illustration in the public domain printing. If they claim they own the copyright to any illustration in the pre-1923 printing because they own the original art work, refer them to the Cornell page and then tell them to go suck eggs.

Of course, I am not a lawyer. As previously noted, if you’d like other opinions, contact either Greg Newby at Project Gutenberg or Juliet Sutherland at Distributed Proofreaders. Also refer to the book The Public Domain — How to Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More by Attorney Stephen Fishman, published by Nolo Press.

What Sadi described when dealing with agents sounds like the stock answer from permission departments and stock-houses when someone requests an image or text. Word count or a approximation of usage is how permission departments determine rates. I’m surprised that they didn’t ask about print runs.

Two other comments:

Dover generally publishes a large selection of work in the public domain, but they also publish work still in copyright.

Are the color images photographs of the original illustrations? Because it could be that they’re selling you the right to the photograph of the illustration. Stockhouses sell images of places and images of public domain work and locations with a copyright on that photo. I’m sure if you took the photographs of the images from the books themselves, there’s no copyright issue, just an issue with the archives department on their policy of photography.
(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I have worked in Subsidiary Rights departments and libraries.)

So if you secure original published printings/publications contemporary to his time (versus modern reissues), you may do anything you wish with their contents.

Now if certain entities hold things like original drawings/photographs, they certainly may charge you a license to use them as source material, but it’s not a copyright issue per se (although if they are “unpublished” they may be covered under copyright.) Just because they may own the original print from which all the published versions are derived from, does not extend copyright ownership over the derivatives that have been published.

I’d contact Greg Newby at Project Gutenberg who can give you a much more definitive answer on this (and correct where I’m wrong.) Juliet Sutherland at Distributed Proofreaders is another person to contact.

Now certainly, you may be constrained by your institution or contracting organization to have to go through the gyrations to get copyright clearance, and that only show how insane copyright has become.

(Disclaimer: I am not a Lawyer.)