Lewis Carroll (Author of Alice in Wonderland) Children's , Poetry , Fiction Influences edit data The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense. Oxford scholar, Church of England Deacon, University Lecturer in Mathematics and Logic, academic author of learned theses, gifted pioneer of portrait photography, colourful writer of imaginative genius and yet a shy and pedantic man, Lewis Carroll stands pre-eminent in the pantheon of inventive literary geniuses. He also has works published under his re The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer.

His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense. Oxford scholar, Church of England Deacon, University Lecturer in Mathematics and Logic, academic author of learned theses, gifted pioneer of portrait photography, colourful writer of imaginative genius and yet a shy and pedantic man, Lewis Carroll stands pre-eminent in the pantheon of inventive literary geniuses. He also has works published under his real name. For more information, please see ...more Lewis Carroll | Feedbooks Italian Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman, and photographer.

His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the… (more) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense. His facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging from children to the literary elite. But beyond this, his work has become embedded deeply in modern culture. He has directly influenced many artists. There are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world including North America, Japan, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.

His biography has recently come under much question as a result of what some call the "Carroll Myth." Source: Wikipedia Lewis Carroll | Lit2Go ETC Readability Lewis Carroll The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems “The Hunting of the Snark” and “Jabberwocky.” Nationality: English Birth Date: 27 Jan 1832 Death Date: 14 Jan 1898 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a work of children’s literature by the English mathematician and author, Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, written under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy realm populated by talking playing cards and anthropomorphic creatures. The tale is fraught with satirical allusions to Dodgson’s friends and to the lessons that British schoolchildren were expected to memorize.

The Wonderland described in the tale plays with logic in ways that has made the story of lasting popularity with children as well as adults. The book is often referred to by the abbreviated title Alice in Wonderland. This alternate title was popularized by the numerous film and television adaptations of the story produced over the years. Some printings of this title contain both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. To access artwork from the 1889 Harper's publication, visit the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland collection on ClipArt ETC. Sylvie and Bruno (1889) Sylvie and Bruno, first published in 1889, and its 1893 second volume Sylvie and Bruno Concluded form the last novel by Lewis Carroll published during his lifetime. Both volumes were illustrated by Harry Furniss. The novel has two main plots: one set in the real world at the time the book was published (the Victorian era), the other in the fictional world of Fairyland.

While the latter plot is a fairytale with many nonsense elements and poems, similar to Carroll’s most famous children’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the story set in Victorian Britain is a social novel, with its characters discussing various concepts and aspects of religion, society, philosophy and morality. Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) Sylvie and Bruno, first published in 1889, and its 1893 second volume Sylvie and Bruno Concluded form the last novel by Lewis Carroll published during his lifetime. Both volumes were illustrated by Harry Furniss. The novel has two main plots: one set in the real world at the time the book was published (the Victorian era), the other in the fictional world of Fairyland. While the latter plot is a fairytale with many nonsense elements and poems, similar to Carroll’s most famous children’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the story set in Victorian Britain is a social novel, with its characters discussing various concepts and aspects of religion, society, philosophy and morality.

Lewis Carroll Books - Biography and List of Works - Author of 'A Selection From the Letters Of Lewis Carroll To His Child-Friends' Home > Authors > Lewis Carroll books Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832- January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll , was a British author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer. His facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging from the most naive to the most sophisticated. His works have remained popular since they were published and have influenced not only children's literature, but also a number of major 20th century writers such as James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges. There are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of Lewis Carroll's works in many parts of the world including North America, Japan, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with some Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors belonged to the two traditional English upper-middle class professions: the army and the Church.

His great-grandfather, also Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become a bishop; his grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed in action in 1803 while his two sons were hardly more than babies. The elder of these, yet another Charles, reverted to the other family business and took holy orders. He went to Westminster School, and thence to Christ Church, Oxford. He was mathematically gifted and won a double first degree which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead he married his first cousin in 1827 and retired into obscurity as a country parson. Young Charles was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Warrington, Cheshire, the oldest boy but already the third child of the four-and-a-half year old marriage. Eight more were to follow and, remarkably for the time, all of them, seven girls and four boys, survived into adulthood. When Charles was 11 his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in north Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious Rectory. This remained their home for the next 25 years.

Dodgson senior made some progress through the ranks of the church: he published some sermons, translated Tertullian, became an Archdeacon of Ripon Cathedral, and involved himself, sometimes influentially, in the intense religious disputes that were dividing the Anglican church. He was High Church, inclining to Anglo-Catholicism, an admirer of Newman and the Tractarian movement, and he did his best to instill such views in his children. In the early years young Charles was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress. It is often said that he was naturally left-handed and suffered severe psychological trauma by being forced to counteract this tendency, but there is no documentary evidence to support this. Charles also suffered from another disability, a stutter that often influenced his social life throughout his years. At twelve he was sent away to a small private school at nearby Richmond, where he appears to have been happy and settled. But in 1845, young Dodgson moved on to Rugby School, where he was evidently less happy, for as he wrote some years after leaving the place: I cannot say ...

that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again ... I can honestly say that if I could have been ... secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear. The nature of this nocturnal 'annoyance' will probably never now be fully understood, but it may be that he is delicately referring to some form of sexual molestation. Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy his age since I came to Rugby" observed R.B. Mayor, the Maths master. He left Rugby at the end of 1850 and, after an interval which remains unexplained, went on in January 1851 to Oxford, attending his father's old college, Christ Church. He had only been at Oxford two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" perhaps meningitis or a stroke at the age of forty-seven. Whatever Dodgson's feelings may have been about this death, he did not allow them to distract him too much from his purpose at Oxford.

He may not always have worked hard, but he was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him. The following year he received a first in Honour Moderations, and shortly after he was nominated to a Studentship (the Christ Church equivalent of a fellowship), by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey. His early academic career veered between high-octane promise and irresistible distraction. Through his own laziness, he failed an important scholarship, but still his clear brilliance as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the next 26 years. The income was good, but the work bored him and his stammer hampered him. Many of his pupils were older and richer than he was, and almost all of them were uninterested. They didn't want to be taught; he didn't want to teach them. Mutual apathy ruled. At Oxford he was also diagnosed as an epileptic, then a considerable social stigma to bear. However, recently John R. Hughes, director of the University of Illinois at Chicago's epilepsy clinic, has argued that Carroll may have been misdiagnosed.

In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography, first under the influence of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later his Oxford friend Reginald Southey and art photography pioneer Oscar Rejlander. Dodgson soon excelled at the art, and it became an expression of his very personal inner philosophy; a belief in the divinity of what he called beauty, by which he seemed to mean a state of moral or aesthetic or physical perfection. He found this divine beauty not simply in the magic of theatre, but in the poetry of words, in a mathematical formula and perhaps supremely, in the human form; in the body-images that moved him. When he took up photography he sought with his own representations to combine the ideals of freedom and beauty into the innocence of Eden, where the human body and human contact could be enjoyed without shame. In his middle age, he was to re-form this philosophy into the pursuit of beauty as a state of Grace, a means of retrieving lost innocence. This, along with his lifelong passion for the theatre, was to bring him into confrontation with Victorian morality and his own family's High Church beliefs. As his main biographer Morton Cohen noted...

"He rejected outright the Calvinist principle of original sin and replaced it with the notion of inborn divinity." The definitive work on his photography (Roger Taylor's Lewis Carroll , Photographer (2002) exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over fifty percent of his surviving work depicts young girls. However it should be noted that less than a third of his original portfolio has survived (see below). His favorite girl model was Alexandra Kitchin ("Xie"), whom he photographed around fifty times from the age of four until the age of about 16. In 1880 he was striving to be allowed to photograph the 16 year old Xie in 'bathing dress', but was not allowed this liberty. Most of his girl subjects would write their name on the corner of the print in coloured ink. It's assumed that Dodgson either destroyed or returned the nude photographs to the families of the girls he had photographed. They were long presumed lost, but six nudes have since surfaced, four of which have been published and another two of which little is known. Dodgson's practice of photographing or sketching nude girls has added to speculation that he was a pedophile (see below).

There is a clear difference between Dodgson's girls and depictions by other Victorian artists; in almost all of his solo portraits of girls they are depicted unburdened by the heavy weight of Victorian symbolism, and are simply and strongly themselves. He also found photography to be a useful entry into higher social circles. Once he had a studio of his own, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He also made some landscapes and anatomy studies. Dodgson abruptly ceased to photograph in 1880. Over 24 years he had completely mastered the medium, set up his own studio at the top of Tom Quad, and created around 3,000 images. Less than 1000 have survived time and deliberate destruction. He spent several hours each day creating a diary detailing the circumstances surrounding the making of each photograph, but this register was later destroyed. With the advent of Modernism tastes changed, and his photography became forgotten from around 1920 until the 1960s.

He is now considered one of the very best Victorian photographers, and is certainly the one who has had the most influence on modern art photographers. The young adult Charles Dodgson was about six foot tall, slender and handsome in a soft-focused dreamy sort of way, with curling brown hair and blue eyes. At the unusually late age of seventeen, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough which left him with poor hearing in his right ear and was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. The only overt defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his "hesitation" a stammer he had acquired in early childhood and which was to plague him throughout his entire life. The stammer has always been a potent part of the myth. It is part of the mythology that Dodgson only stammered in adult company, and was free and fluent with children, but there is no evidence to support this idea. Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer while many adults failed to notice it. It came and went for its own reasons, but not as a cliched manifestation of fear of the adult world.

Dodgson himself was far more acutely aware of it than most people he met; he caricatured himself as 'the Dodo' in Alice's Adventures In Wonderland,referring to his difficulty in pronouncing his last name. Although his stammer troubled him, even obsessed him sometimes, it was never bad enough to stop him using his other qualities to do well in society. He was naturally gregarious and egoistic enough to relish attention and admiration. At a time when people devised their own amusements and singing and recitation were required social skills, the young Dodgson was well-equipped as an engaging entertainer. He could sing tolerably well and was not afraid to do so in front of an audience. He was adept at mimicry and story-telling. He was reputedly quite good at charades. There are brief hints at a soaring sense of the spiritual and the divine; small moments that reveal a rich and intensely lived inner life.

'That is a wild and beautiful bit of poetry, the song of "call the cattle home",' he suddenly observed, in the midst of an analysis of Charles Kingsley's novel Alton Locke: I remember hearing it sung at Albrighton: I wonder if any one there could have entered into the spirit of Alton Locke. I think not. I think the character of most that I meet is merely refined animal... How few seem to care for the only subjects of real interest in life. He was also quite socially ambitious, anxious to make his mark on the world in some way, as a writer, or as an artist. It was perhaps the realization that his talent as an artist was not sufficient that he eventually turned to photography. His scholastic career was seen as something of a stop-gap to other more exciting attainments that he desired. In the interim between his early published writing and the success of Alice , he began to move in the Pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. Dodgson developed a close relationship with the Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family, and also knew William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Arthur Hughes among other artists.

He also knew the fairy-tale author George MacDonald well - it was the enthusiastic reception of "Alice" by the young MacDonald daughters that convinced him to submit the work for publication. During his writing career, Carroll wrote poetry and short stories, sending them to various magazines and enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications, The Comic Times and The Train, as well as smaller magazines like the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of his output was humorous, sometimes satirical. But his standards and his ambitions were exacting. "I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day," he wrote in July 1855. Years before Alice, he was thinking up ideas for children's books that would make money: 'Christmas book [that would] sell well... Practical hints for constructing Marionettes and a theatre'. The ideas got better as he got older, but his canny mind, with an eye to income, was always there.

In 1856 he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A very predictable little romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in The Train under the authorship of 'Lewis Carroll'. This pseudonym was a play on his real name, Lewis being the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll being an anglicised version of Carolus, the Latin for Charles. In the same year, a new Dean, Henry Liddell, arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him a young wife and children, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson's life over the following years. He became close friends with the mother and the children, particularly the three sisters Lorina, Alice and Edith. It seems there became something of a tradition of his taking the girls out on the river for picnics at Godstow or Nuneham. It was on one such expedition, in 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success; the first Alice book.

Having told the story and been begged by Alice Liddell to write it down, Dodgson eventually presented Alexandra Kitchin ("Xie"), daughter of the Dean of Durham, with a hand-written, illustrated manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground , now highly sought after by literary collectors, changed hands to a private collector on Thursday 26th January, 2006. It was sold at Christie's for a staggering £4,800 by the Duke of Gloucester, its previous owner, to pay for his father's death duties (The Sunderland Echo, 28th January, 2006). With the immediate, phenomenal success of Alice, the story of the author's life becomes effectively divided in two: the continuing story of Dodgson's real life and the evolving myth surrounding "Lewis Carroll." Carroll quickly became a rich and detailed alter ego, a persona as famous and deeply embedded in the popular psyche as the story he told. To him belongs a large part of the image of little girls and strange otherworldliness that we know from the author of Alice.

It is undisputed that throughout his growing wealth and fame, he continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and that he remained in residence there until his death. He published Sylvie and Bruno , in 1889 and 1893 respectively. He also published many mathematical papers and books under his own name. Drug use An allegation arose at some point that Carroll used the fungus ergot, which is what LSD was eventually derived from. It can induce psychoactive experiences at large enough quantities, and was used as a medical treatment during the 19th century. While some artists and poets have been inspired by hallucinogenic drugs, there is no factual evidence for the allegation that Carroll took psychoactive drugs. However, Carroll was a fairly heavy cannabis smoker. According to one source, he regularly bought hash oil, which was legal at the time.

Allegations of pedophilia Dodgson's undeniable fondness for little girls, the sheer number of his child friends, his collection of the early child photographs by Oscar Rejlander, his love of the London theatres before the child-actress reforms, and psychological readings of his work, especially his photographs of nude or semi-nude girls and his sketchbooks featuring his own drawings of such, have all led to speculation that he was a pedophile, albeit probably a celibate one. The issue has been contentious, with some arguing that child nudes were not uncommon during the era. Other notable Victorian-era photographers who took images of nude children include Julia Margaret Cameron and Francis Meadow Sutcliffe. According to the 'controversial' investigation by Karoline Leach into what she calls the 'Carroll Myth' (see below), the first hints of allegations that Dodgson was a pedophile seem to have appeared in 1932, in The Life of Lewis Carroll by Langford Reed.

According to Leach, Reed was the first to claim that all of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached puberty (around 16 in 1870s England), though Reed apparently only intended to suggest that Dodgson was thereby a pure man untainted by touch of lust for adult flesh. This claim that Dodgson lost interest in girls once they reached puberty was later caught up by other biographers, who remained unaware of the evidence to the contrary since Dodgson's family refused to publish his diaries and letters. The view of Dodgson as having no adult life and being preoccupied with children persisted among his biographers, including Florence Becker Lennon (The White Knight, 1952). The debate tended to veer between those who believed Dodgson to have been asexually obsessed with children and those who believed this obsession to have been pedophilic. The issue was rekindled in 1995 with the authoritative Lewis Carroll, a Biography by Morton Cohen. Cohen writes: "We cannot know to what extent sexual urges lay behind Charles's preference for drawing and photographing children in the nude. He contended the preference was entirely aesthetic.

But given his emotional attachment to children as well as his aesthetic appreciation of their forms, his assertion that his interest was strictly artistic is naïve. He probably felt more than he dared acknowledge, even to himself. Certainly he always sought to have another adult present when nude prepubescents modelled for him." Cohen further notes that the children's mothers were encouraged to be present, and asks if these precautions were the result of Dodgson "insuring himself against slip-ups." (p 228-229) Cohen concedes that Dodgson "apparently convinced many of his friends that his attachment to the nude female child form was free of any eroticism," but adds that "later generations look beneath the surface" (p 229). The only recorded instance of trouble associated with the nudes of children was Dodgson's experience with the Mayhew family. In 1879, Dodgson wrote what have been called by Cohen "several curious letters ... to the family of Andrew Mayhew, an Oxford colleague ...

He asked permission to take nude photographs of the three Mayhew daughters, ages 6, 11, and 13, with no other adults present." The Mayhew parents, who had previously allowed Dodgson to photograph their children, refused, and Cohen notes this same period saw a "sudden break in the friendship" between Dodgson and the Mayhew family (p. 170). Leach suggests that the problem lay with his desire to study the older daughters in frontal positions and not with the younger children. Karoline Leach's work and the 'Carroll Myth' A new analysis of Dodgson's sexual proclivities (and indeed the evolution of the entire process of his biography) appears in Karoline Leach's 1999 book, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild. She claims that the image of Dodgson's alleged pedophilia was built out of a failure to understand Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea that Dodgson had no interest in adult women which evolved out of the minds of various biographers. She termed this simplified, often frankly fictional image 'the Carroll Myth'.

According to Leach, who cites much prima facie evidence, Dodgson's real life was very different from the accepted biographical image. He was in fact keenly interested in adult women and apparently enjoyed several relationships with women, married and single. Some of these were his child friends with whom he retained good relations into adulthood (in complete refutation of the mythic idea that he 'lost interest' in any girl over the age of 14), but others, like Catherine Lloyd, Constance Burch, Edith Shute, Gertrude Thomson (to name but a few, were women he met as adults and with whom he shared very close and meaningful friendships. Suggestions of pedophilia only evolved many years after his death, when his well-meaning family had suppressed all evidence of these adult friendships in order to try to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man only interested in little girls. This serves to repudiate some of the classical evidence for the claims of pedophilia. Dodgson's problems with societal disapproval, Leach says, stemmed not from his usage of nude child models but his attempts to get slightly older models to pose in 'bathing dress' and other immodest clothing.

These studies of scantily-dressed older models have all disappeared, leaving commentators only the photos of young girls to comment on. In a review of the title in Victorian Studies (Vol.43, No.4) reviewer Donald Rackin wrote, "As a piece of biographical scholarship, Karoline Leach's In the Shadow of the Dreamchild is difficult to take seriously". However, for all the emotional intensity of his attack, he visibly failed to detail any actual errors in her work. Nor have any errors been pointed out so far by any other authorities, and many now regard her work as an important step towards a better understanding of Carroll. Her work has been paralleled by that of Hugues Lebailly whose studies of Dodgson's artistic and social interests also support the idea that the image of his 'obsession' with little girls was largely simplistic or mythic in origin. Jack the Ripper theories Many wild theories have been woven around the life of Lewis Carroll. Perhaps the most extreme emerged in 1996 when author Richard Wallace published a book titled Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend accusing Lewis Carroll and his colleague Thomas Vere Bayne of being Jack the Ripper.

It was largely based upon anagrams Wallace constructed from Carroll's writing. Carroll and Bayne have strong alibis for most of the nights of the Ripper murders, and Wallace's theory has not found support from other scholars. Carroll did show some interest in the Jack the Ripper case, but this is hardly unusual, given the profound publicity surrounding the crimes. A passage in his diary dated August 26, 1891, reports that he spoke that day with an acquaintance of his about his "very ingenious theory about 'Jack the Ripper'". No other information about this theory has been found. Inventions Lewis Carroll seems to have thought a lot about how to solve some common technical problems of the day. The fact that he was able to understand and use new technologies is amply demonstrated by his use of the camera, which was not as user-friendly as it is today. One such invention, as cited in his journal on September 24, 1891 and as published in, was a system of writing called Nyctography and a tool called the Nyctograph. He invented this because he would be unable to sleep at night and would want to write down his ideas to clear his head.

But, wanting to go quickly back to bed, he did not want to go through all the mechanical steps involved in lighting a lamp. He designed a card with square holes in a regular grid. One would always make a dot in the upper-left corner and then make other dots and/or strokes. These symbols were designed to look somewhat like the letters or numbers they represented. This did not seem to be used for any longer writings, since no writings with these symbols survive. But it is probable that Lewis Carroll himself would use this to make short notes to jog his memory, and then he would probably write the idea out in his journal. He also invented the pencil and paper game Word Ladder. You can browse "Alice Under Ground" - the precursor to "Alice in Wonderland" at the website of the British Library. Their manuscript was created as a gift by Charles Dodgson to Alice Liddell in 1864: Lewis Carroll books Lewis Carroll Tweet Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer.

His most famous writings are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems “The Hunting of the Snark” and “Jabberwocky”, all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense. His facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging from the most naive to the most sophisticated. His works have remained popular since they were published and have influenced not only children’s literature, but also a number of major 20th century writers such as James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges. In 1865 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published under the pen-name of Lewis Carroll. With the immediate, phenomenal success of Alice, the story of the author’s life becomes effectively divided in two: the continuing story of Dodgson’s real life and the evolving myth surrounding “Lewis Carroll.” Carroll quickly became a rich and detailed alter ego, a persona as famous and deeply embedded in the popular psyche as the story he told. It is undisputed that throughout his growing wealth and fame, he continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and that he remained in residence there until his death.

(source: Wikipedia) Available eBooks Dodgson biography Version for printing Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is better known by the pseudonym "Lewis Carroll". Although he was a mathematician, he is best known as the author of Alice's adventures in wonderland (1865) and Through the looking glass (1872), children's books that are among the most popular of all time. They are distinguished as satire and as examples of verbal wit. Dodgson wrote mathematical works under his own name but for his children's books he invented the pen name "Lewis Carroll" by translating his first two names "Charles Lutwidge" into Latin as "Carolus Lodovicus", then anglicising and reversing their order. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's father was the Reverend Charles Dodgson. Charles Dodgson senior was born in 1800 and studied at the University of Oxford where he gained a First Class degree in both mathematics and classics. He was appointed as a mathematics lecturer at Oxford where he held a Fellowship but, on marrying his cousin Frances Jane Lutwidge in 1827, he had to give up his Oxford Fellowship.

He then became a curate at All Saints' Church in Daresbury and it was in that town that ten of Charles and Frances' eleven children were born. Charles Lutwidge was the eldest of his parents three boys, having two elder sisters Fanny, born in 1828, and Elizabeth, born in 1830. Charles was baptised on 11 July 1832 in his father's church and grew up in a strict Christian household. His early education, like that of his brothers and sisters, was provided by his parents. He read mostly religious books as a child and an indication of his rapid progress is that he had read Pilgrim's Progress by the time he was seven. Charles looked up to his father and wished to be like him. Since mathematics was his father's favourite subject, it is easy to see how Charles gained an early love for it. Not only did Charles model himself on his father, but his father also wanted his son to follow in his footsteps by studying mathematics at Oxford, then obtaining a Fellowship, marrying and becoming a vicar.

At Daresbury the Dodgson family had to struggle financially, so it was a relief when Charles's father moved to become vicar at Croft-on-Tees in Yorkshire in 1843 where his income was substantially increased. At Croft the family lived in a large rectory with a wonderful garden but chose to live much more simply than they might have done. On 1 August 1844 Charles enter Richmond School as a boarder, living in the headmaster's house. The school was only ten miles from his home and so his parents were able to visit him just over a week after he arrived. They found that he was settling in well and indeed at this school he received an excellent foundation for his education, excelling in mathematics. On 27 January 1846, Charles' fourteenth birthday, he enrolled at Rugby School. This was a famous school but one where Charles found things extremely difficult. A shy, sensitive boy with a stammer, he suffered bullying from the older boys and, as Clark writes [ 7 ]:- From every point of view life at Rugby was a personal disaster for young Dodgson.

Despite being deeply unhappy, Dodgson achieved high standards in his school work, receiving a steady stream of prizes. Again mathematics was his favourite subject but he also excelled at divinity. A number of illnesses which he suffered from in 1848 had a lasting effect. The first was whooping cough which he caught in the spring. He was left with a persistent cough which returned at various times throughout his life. In the autumn he contracted mumps and this left him somewhat deaf in his right ear, a problem which never improved. He wrote afterwards of his time at Rugby (see for example [ 9 ]):- During my stay I made I suppose some progress in learning of various kinds, but none of it was done with love, and I spent an incalculable time in writing out impositions - this last I consider one of the chief faults of Rugby School. I made some friends there ... but I cannot say that I look back upon my life at a Public School with any sensations of pleasure, or that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again. He left Rugby in December 1849 and in the following May he travelled to the University of Oxford to make the necessary arrangements to begin his studies there.

As his father wished, Dodgson matriculated at Christ Church College Oxford, which had been his father's College. Things did not start very well for him, however, for there was a shortage of accommodation and he had to return to his parent's home in Croft and wait until accommodation could be arranged before starting his university studies. On 24 January 1851 Dodgson returned to Oxford to live with the Rev. Jacob Ley, a friend of his father. Two days later his mother died suddenly at the age of 47 and again he had to return to Croft. When he returned to Oxford he was filled with a determination to work hard so that he might win scholarships and become financially independent. He was able to mix social and cultural activities with hard work at mathematics and in November 1851 he was awarded a Boulter Scholarship worth 20 pounds a year. After receiving a Second Class in classics and a First Class in mathematics in December 1852 he was awarded a Fellowship of 25 pounds a year for life.

This came with the right to live in Christ Church College, but although there were no requirements to any further academic achievements, he was required to take Holy Orders and to remain unmarried. Dodgson's father was absolutely delighted with his son's success and, moreover, he himself had been made Canon of Ripon Cathedral in 1852, going on to become Archdeacon of Richmond two years later. This was the year when Dodgson completed his studies receiving a Third Class Degree in Classics but topping the list of those receiving First Class honours in mathematics by a good margin. The challenges ahead were now the senior scholarship competition and he knew that success in that would almost certainly lead to his appointment as a lecturer in mathematics. At this point, however, the usually conscientious Dodgson became too taken up with leisure and cultural activities and failed to put in the necessary work at mathematics. He did begin to take pupils, although not as an official university tutor, and this too must have taken much of his time.

Disappointed with his own performance in the two scholarship examination papers on 22 March 1855, and that on the morning of the following day, he gave up and did not turn up to sit the final paper on the afternoon of 23 March (only two students did sit it). Of course he did not receive the scholarship and wrote in his diary (see for example [ 9 ]):- It is tantalizing to think how easily ... I might have got it, if I had only worked properly during this term, which I fear I must consider as wasted. However, I have now got a year before me, and with this past term as a lesson ... I mean to have read by next time, Integral Calculus, Optics (and theory of light), Astronomy, and higher Dynamics. I record this resolution to shame myself with, in case March 1856 finds me still unprepared, knowing how many similar failures there have been in my life already. He still had a hectic schedule, coaching pupils, and he also had, since February 1855, an official appointment as sub-librarian at Christ Church.

In another scholarship examination he again failed to win an award but then took on coaching fourteen pupils for the Mathematical Examiner. This task (see for example [ 9 ]):- ... will give me no official position as it is merely a private arrangement between ourselves: it is decidedly favourable to my getting the lectureship hereafter, though it by no means secures it. During the summer of 1855 Dodgson taught at his father's school in Croft and by the time he returned to Oxford in October it was as a Mathematics Lecturer, the position that he had sought. It meant that he now did not need to take the scholarship examinations in March 1856 as he had planned. Dodgson remained at Christ Church, Oxford, lecturing on mathematics and writing treatises and guides for students until 1881. Although he took deacon's orders in 1861, Dodgson was never ordained a priest, partly because he was afflicted with a stammer that made preaching difficult and partly, perhaps, because he had discovered other interests such as the theatre.

It seems likely, however, that as time went on he found it harder to accept the view that non-Christian were condemned and, as a man of great honesty, would therefore find the oaths he would be required to swear to become a priest unacceptable. Among Dodgson's hobbies was photography, at which he became highly proficient. His interest began when visiting his uncle in 1855, and at that time he took some photographs with his uncle's equipment. He purchased his own camera and developing chemicals in March 1856 and began to experiment with pictures of landscapes, architecture, sculptures and, most of all, of people. His family, friends and colleagues became the subjects of his photographs but he excelled especially at photographing children, which was his greatest pleasure. Alice Liddell, one of the three daughters of Henry George Liddell, the dean of Christ Church, was one of his photographic subjects and the model for the fictional Alice. Other subjects were the children of the writer George Macdonald and the sons of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Not only did Dodgson enjoy photographing children, but he also enjoyed their company.

In 1932 Alice Liddell recalled how she and her sisters Lorina and Edith:- ... used to sit on the big sofa on each side of him, while he told us stories, illustrating them by pencil or ink drawings as he went along ... He seemed to have an endless store of these fantastical tales, which he made up as he told them, drawing busily on a large sheet of paper all the time. They were not always entirely new. Sometimes they were new versions of old stories; sometimes they started on the old basis, but grew into new tales owing to the frequent interruptions which opened up fresh and undreamed-of possibilities. It was in 1862 that Dodgson wrote down the stories at Alice's request. Henry Kingsley, the author, visited the Liddells and happened to pick up Dodgson's stories. He made it very clear that Dodgson had to be persuaded to publish his writings. Three years later, after polishing them and adding some more material, Dodgson published his first "Alice book" as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. As a mathematician, Dodgson was rather conservative but certainly thorough and careful.

He was the author of a fair number of mathematics books including: A syllabus of plane algebraical geometry (1860), Two Books of Euclid (1860), The Formulae of Plane Trigonometry (1861), Condensation of Determinants (1866), Elementary Treatise on Determinants (1867), Examples in Arithmetic (1874), Euclid and his modern rivals (1879), Curiosa Mathematica, Part I: A New Theory of Parallels (1888), and Curiosa Mathematica, Part II: Pillow Problems thought out during Sleepless Nights (1893). None of his mathematics books have proved of enduring importance except for Euclid and his modern rivals (1879) which is of historical interest. Dodgson wrote it to defend using Euclid 's Elements as a means of teaching geometry. The book is written in the form of a play in which the ghost of Euclid returns to defend his book to modern geometers.

Euclid sums up saying:- Let me carry with me the hope that I have convinced you of the importance, if not the necessity, of retaining my order and numbering, and my method of treating straight lines, angles, right angles, and (most especially) parallels. Leave me these untouched, and I shall look on with great contentment while other changes are made ... It is a serious work with well argued cases on all sides regarding the teaching of geometry. It contains much evidence of Dodgson's humour too as for example after the ghost of Euclid makes his first appearance he leaves saying:- ... that concludes our present interview; so we will meet again when you have reviewed my Modern Rivals one by one. If you had any slow music handy, I would vanish to it: as it is ... [Vanishes without slow music] Although Dodgson argued here for retaining Euclid 's way of treating parallels, in Curiosa Mathematica, Part I: A New Theory of Parallels published nine years later, he presented his own ideas on dealing with the parallel axiom. As a mathematical logician, he was interested in increasing understanding by treating it as a game.

He published The Game of Logic in 1887 and Symbolic Logic Part I in 1896. In the latter work Dodgson presented a way of visually representing propositions in a diagram which is similar to Venn diagrams, developed by John Venn in 1881, but Dodgson's pictures have certain advantages. However, Venn diagrams are today much used and Dodgson's gameboard method is forgotten. Symbolic Logic Part I contains the statement that:- I have a quantity of manuscript in hand for Parts II and III, and hope to be able - should life, and health, and opportunity, be granted to me - to publish them... In fact between 1959 and 1970 portions of the missing parts were found by William Warren Bartley and published for the first time in 1977. In the article [ 23 ] Bartley claims that the previously unpublished material shows specific achievements which can be credited to Dodgson. These are:- By 1896 Dodgson had developed a mechanical test of validity for a large part of the logic of terms, an achievement usually credited to Leopold Löwenheim [in 1915].

As early as 1894 Dodgson used truth tables for the solution of specific logic problems. The application of truth tables and matrices did not come into general use until 1920. By 1896 Dodgson had developed the method of trees for determining some validity, which bears a resemblance to the trees frequently employed by contemporary logicians. Other recent work has again put Dodgson's mathematical contributions in a much more favourable light than it was previously seen. For example in [ 20 ] Abeles writes:- A discussion is given of three pamphlets on elections and committees by C L Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) written between 1873 and 1876. It is argued that Dodgson's work on cycles anticipates a stochastic model proposed by Thompson and Remage in 1964 and includes ideas that are basic to maximum likelihood estimation.

In [ 18 ] we also have a very positive view of Dodgson's numerous contributions to the theory of elections, perhaps his most significant being Parliamentary Elections and The Principles of Parliamentary Representation both written in 1884:- Dodgson's work present a complete and unified approach to the electoral reform issues which were being discussed at the time, but in doing so he developed and contributed ideas to game theory and apportionment which are well in advance of the 1880s. Finally we should mention Dodgson's love of puzzles [ 9 ]:- He was good at charades, he sang, he told stories. Soon enough, jokes, puzzles, games, questions-and-answers, tricks with numbers and with words, and mental exercises became for him a means of everyday amusement and for his family and friends source of fun and diversion. He also played traditional games - chess, croquet, billiards, cards - but his mind was not content with these, and he expanded, extended, and experimented with all forms and fashions, pushing traditional entertainments to their outer limits and inventing new ones.

in the 1870s he created a veritable cornucopia of conundrums and mental challenges, brilliant additions to the store of magic and game playing ... He was so creative and so productive that his games and diversions fill sizeable anthologies. The book [ 14 ] contains "42 delightfully diverting mind-benders", puzzles which Dodgson was working on at the time he died. His death was sudden. He contracted a cold in early January 1898 which at first seemed very minor but it developed into a chest problem and his doctor insisted he go to bed. His breathing became more and more difficult and he died at 2.30 in the afternoon of 14 January. Dodgson, writing as Lewis Carroll, contributed wonderful examples of nonsense verse the best known of which is 'Jabberwocky' from Through the Looking-Glass. This begins:- 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

The Hunting of the Snark, published by Dodgson (as Lewis Carroll in 1876), has been called:- ... the longest and best sustained nonsense poem in the English language. Several words from his nonsense poems have entered standard English language usage. For example, the word 'chortle', a word that combines 'snort' and 'chuckle', appears in 'Jabberwocky'. Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson Lewis Carroll | Feedbooks Italian Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman, and photographer.

His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the… (more) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman, and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense. His facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging from children to the literary elite. But beyond this, his work has become embedded deeply in modern culture. He has directly influenced many artists. There are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world including North America, Japan, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.

His biography has recently come under much question as a result of what some call the "Carroll Myth." Source: Wikipedia Through the Looking Glass of Lewis Carroll: Master Photographer Through the Looking Glass of Lewis Carroll: Master Photographer Topics: Legendary Authors , Children's Books It was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that made Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll , a household name. However, during his own time Charles Dodgson was known for several other vocations besides that of authoring children's books. In addition to being an author, Dodgson was a professor of mathematics at Oxford University, an ordained deacon in the Anglican church, and a very accomplished photographer. Influenced by his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge (also a well-known photographer) Dodgson took up photography in 1856 at the age of twenty-four. At that time, photography was a brand-new form of art just beginning to capture the imagination of Victorian England. With characteristic creativity and intelligence, Dodgson quickly excelled at this new art and was soon considered a master of photography.

The photographic technique he used is called the collodion wet plate process, whereby a glass plate was coated with a mixture of soluble iodide and collodion, submerged in a silver nitrate solution in a dark room, then exposed in the camera while still wet, producing a glass negative from which multiple prints could be made. Photographers using the wet plate process had to work quickly to develop their images because collodion dries within ten minutes - making the image impossible to retrieve from the negative. As with his writing, Dodgson's photography centered around children, particularly young girls. One of the subjects he frequently photographed was Alice Liddell, the daughter of Henry Liddell, dean of Christ Church. Alice Liddell is said to have been the inspiration for the character of Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland although Dodgson claimed the character wasn't based on anyone in particular. In recent years, controversy has begun to swirl around Dodgson's photography . Over half of the portraits he produced are of girls between the ages of 10 and 15. Some are photographed nude or partially nude causing modern-day biographers to debate the nature of Dodgson's relationship to his young female subjects.

Some biographers argue there is evidence that Dodgson had paedophilic leanings. Others point out that in the Victorian Era, children represented innocence. Nude portraits of children were commonplace, appearing on everything from postcards to Christmas cards as a way of depicting purity in its highest form. Charles Dodgson's photography career lasted for twenty-four years, yielding a portfolio of around 3,000 images and his own studio at Christ Church, Oxford where he taught mathematics. He did portraits of many of Britain's elite personages including Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Sadly, less than 1,000 of Dodgson's photographs have survived. In 1880, with the dry-plate process replacing the collodion wet plate process, Dodgson decided to end his career in photography saying that the dry-plate process had made photography something that anyone could do.

Lewis Carroll — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm spoken word Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass as well as the poems " The Hunting of the Snark " and " Jabberwocky ", all considered to be within the genre of literary nonsense . His facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging… read more Lewis Carroll - Google Play Android Device Manager Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, was an English writer, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, which includes the poem The Jabberwocky, and the poem "The Hunting of the Snark", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense.

He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.

Question: Author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is better known by what name?
Answer: Lewis Carroll