Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll is the pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), professor of mathematics in Oxford and a pioneer photographer, who achieved lasting fame through his children's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

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").

A talented and promising student, Dodgson excelled in maths and got a post at Christ Church College (part of 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 becoming a priest.

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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland began as a one of many fantastic tales while rowing on the Thames. This one incorporated each member of the boating party as a character: Lorina Liddell as Lory, Alice Liddell as Alice, Edith Liddell as the Eaglet, Reverend Duckworth as the Duck, 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 and 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. He stayed up late on July 4, 1862 writing down the first draft of the story he had told that afternoon
2. He presented Alice a handwritten and illustrated manuscript for Christmas 1865 (about 18,000 words)
3. 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]