"Lewis Carroll," creator of the brilliantly witty Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland, was a pseudonym for Charles Lutwidge
Dodgson, a shy Oxford don with a stammer.
He was born at Daresbury, Cheshire on January 27, 1832, son of a
vicar. As the eldest boy among eleven children, he learned early to
amuse his siblings by writing and editing family magazines. He was
educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he lectured in
mathematics from1855 to 1881. In 1861 he was ordained as a
deacon.
Dodgson's entry into the world of fiction was accidental. It
happened one "golden afternoon" as he escorted his colleague's
three daughters on a trip up the river Isis. There he invented the
story that might have been forgotten if not for the persistence of
the youngest girl, Alice Liddell. Thanks to her, and to her
encouraging friends, Alice was published in 1865, with drawings by
the political cartoonist, John Tenniel. After Alice, Dodgson wrote
Phantasmagoria and Other Poems (1869), Through the Looking-Glass
(1871), The Hunting of Shark (1876, and Rhyme? and Reason?
(1883).
As a mathematician Dodgson is best known for Euclid and His Modern
Rivals (1879). He was also a superb children's photographer, who
captured the delicate, sensuous beauty of such little girls as
Alice Liddell and Ellen Terry, the future actress. W.H. Auden
called him "one of the best portrait photographer of the century."
Dodgson was also an inventor; his projects included a game of
arithmetic croquet, a substitute for glue, and an apparatus for
making notes in the dark. Though he sought publication for his
light verse, he never dreamed his true gift-telling stories to
children-merited publication or lasting fame, and he avoided
publicity scrupulously Charles Dodgson died in 1898 of influenza.
“Only Lewis Carroll has shown us the world upside down as a child sees it, and has made us laugh as children laugh.” —Virginia Woolf
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