Morton Norton Cohen (born 27 February 1921[1]) is an American author and scholar, and Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York, best known for his extensive studies of children's author Lewis Carroll, including his 1995 biography Lewis Carroll: A Biography.[2][3][4]
Cohen was born in Calgary, Canada, and grew on the North Shore of Boston. He has taught English at West Virginia University, Syracuse University, Rutgers University and the City College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among his dedicated work on Charles Dodgson, he has also produced studies on Henry Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling and other Victorian subjects, as well as children's literature, travel articles and fiction. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Literature in 1996.[1] The Modern Language Association set up the biennially Morton N. Cohen Award for a Distinguished Edition of Letters in his name in 1989. The first award was given in 1991.[5] Under the terms of the award, the "winning collection will be one that provides readers with a clear, accurate, and readable text; necessary background information; and succinct and eloquent introductory material and annotations. The edited collection should be in itself a work of literature."[6][7]
Cohen is a prominent and vocal opponent of the "Carroll Myth", the idea advanced by some scholars that Carroll was not, as is popularly thought, a paedophile. Karoline Leach in In the Shadow of the Dreamchild (1999) wrote that Cohen and previous biographers misunderstood the norms and customs of the Victorian era, and that Carroll's adulation of children was not sexual but a reflection of the romanticisation of the child prevalent in that era. Contrariwise, a website setup by opponents of the tradition Carroll image, writes that he "was honest enough to see that the received image of 'Carroll' was indeed pedophilic, and to say so more bluntly than was comfortable to many", but notes "Inexplicably he lists the numbers of intimate woman-friends that Dodgson had through his life, yet still concludes that his existence revolved exclusively around friendships with small girls!"[8]