Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll is the pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), college tutor of mathematics at Oxford University, poet, novelist, and a pioneer photographer, who achieved lasting fame through his children's books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel Through the Looking Glass.

Early life

Dodgson had seven sisters and two brothers.

Dodgson was homeschooled until he was 12. After three years at the Rugby School, he said "no earthly consideration" would ever get him to return to that boarding school, due to mistreatment from the other boys.

As a boy, Charles had a special aptitude for parody.

Dodgson's response to the many restrictions imposed on Victorian children and the absurdities of college life frequently came out in verse. His earliest surviving poem is My Fairy, a dialogue of "must not's" (and no "you may's").

Life as an Oxford don

A talented and promising student, Dodgson excelled in mathematics and got a post at Christ Church College, Oxford University. He was hired by the Dean (Henry Liddell, a Professor of Greek) and given a lifetime post paying the handsome annual salary of 300 pounds. The post required that he remain celibate and take holy orders, and Liddell exempted him from the usual requirement of being ordained in the Church of England.

Friends in the literary and artistic world

Dodgson became acquainted with many famous men who shared his creative bent, often via his interest in photography (then a new and emerging technology). He met Alfred Tennyson, Thackeray, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, George Macdonald

• His enthusiasm for photography, and his keen appreciation of the beautiful, made him prefer the society of artists to that of any other class of people.

The beginning of Wonderland

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland began as a one of many fantastic tales while rowing on the Thames. Dodgson used the name of his most avid listener, Alice Liddell, for the name of the story's hero, but the character was not based on her.

Dodgson tapped each other member of the boating party for the name of a minor character: Lorina Liddell as Lory, Edith Liddell as the Eaglet, Reverend Duckworth as the Duck, and himself as the Dodo (a nickname he picked up in public school, from having stuttered his surname). The three Liddell girls also appear as Prima, Secunda and Tertia in the prefatory poem All in the Golden Afternoon. In the Mad Tea Party, the Dormouse begins a tale of three little sisters, Elsie (L.C. = Lorina Charlotte), Lacie (anagram of Alice), and Tillie (family nickname for Edith).

Dodgson wrote four versions of Alice in Wonderland:

1. the written text was actually begun on the night following the boat ride
2. Alice's Adventures Underground - presented to Alice a handwritten and illustrated manuscript for Christmas 1865 (about 18,000 words)
3. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - For publication, he nearly doubled its length, adding the Mad Tea Party and getting Punch cartoonist to create illustrations (to Dodgson's exacting specifications)
4. The Nursery Alice was a much shorter work aimed at toddlers

Dodgson wrote a serious work on determinants under his own name, and an introductory textbook on symbolic logic as Lewis Carroll:

• you will find Logic to be one of the most - if not the most - fascinating of mental recreations ... I have myself taught most of its contents ... to many children, and have found them [to] take a real intelligent interest in the subject. ... It will give you clearness of thought - the ability to see your way through a puzzle - the habit of arranging your ideas in an orderly and get-at-able form - and, more valuable than all, the power to detect fallacies, and to tear to pieces the flimsy illogical arguments, which you will so continually encounter in books, in newspapers, in speeches, and even in sermons, and which so easily delude those who have never taken the trouble to master this fascinating Art. [1]