NAME: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson; better known as Lewis Carroll
BORN: 27 January 1832 in Daresbury, England
DIED: 14 January 1898 in Guildford, England
NATIONALITY: English
LIVED: Cheshire, Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey
MARRIED: Never married
What was he like?
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a rather shy, sensitive boy but he was always full of ingenious ideas. As one of the eldest of a family of eleven children, he entertained his siblings with magic tricks, puzzles, number games and word games, all of which he created himself, and he produced magazines full of stories, nonsense rhymes and drawings.
The young adult Charles Dodgson was tall, slender, with curling brown hair and blue eyes. Despite remaining a shy and rather private man, he was an entertaining character who became one of the most famous writers of his day.
Where did he grow up?
Charles was born in the north of England in the small Cheshire village of Daresbury, where his father was the parish priest. In 1843 the family moved to Croft in Yorkshire and lived in a rectory with a large garden for the children. Charles was educated at home by his parents until the age of twelve, and then at Richmond School, where he was a boarder. At fourteen he was sent to Rugby boarding school, but here he was very lonely and miserable. He was often bullied for his lack of sporting ability and his stammer, something which was to plague him throughout his life. Nevertheless he was a brilliant scholar and went to Oxford University, where he gained a First Class Honours degree in mathematics.
Charles stayed on at Christ Church College, Oxford, as a tutor in mathematics, and one of the conditions of his residency was that he took holy orders. So in 1861 Charles was ordained and became known as the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, but he never went into the priesthood.
What did he do apart from writing books?
Apart from teaching, Charles Dodgson had many hobbies and interests. He was a keen photographer and became one of the best portrait photographers of his time. He enjoyed theatre and opera, and loved playing games such as croquet, billiards and chess. He created logic puzzles and games, and made up stories and rhymes for his many child friends. He wrote letters and kept diaries and was very meticulous, making lists and keeping records of everything that he did.
Why did he change his name to Lewis Carroll?
Charles wrote his mathematical books under his real name, but he wanted to be known by a different name for his children’s books so he invented the pen-name Lewis Carroll. He got this name by translating his first two names, Charles Lutwidge, into Latin as Carolus Ludovicus, and then anglicizing and reversing their order.
| English | Latin | English |
| Charles | Carolus | Carroll |
| Lutwidge | Ludovicus | Lewis |
Where did he get the idea for Alice’s adventures?
Charles wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass for the children of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church College, one of whom was called Alice. It all began one summer’s day in 1862 when Charles and his friend Reverend Robinson Duckworth took Alice and her two sisters on a boating trip. To keep them amused he told a delightful tale involving Alice and a White Rabbit, and he wove into the story many of the places and things which they’d seen on their outings in Oxford. Charles based Through the Looking-Glass on the game of chess, played on a giant chessboard with fields for squares. Most of the main characters whom Alice meets in the story are represented by a chess piece, with Alice herself being a White Pawn.
What did people think of Through the Looking-Glass when it was first published?
The public had to wait six years for the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But when Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, with John Tenniel’s outstanding illustrations, appeared in Christmas 1871, readers were, once again, full of praise. (Sometimes the publication date of Through the Looking-Glass is listed as 1872, as recorded on the title page, but the book came out in December of the year before.) Both volumes of Alice became an integral part of childhood – and they still are today. Many of the characters – the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and Humpty Dumpty – have become household names, made famous through literature, television and film. Film director Tim Burton is currently working on a remake of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, due out in March 2010.
What about the illustrations in Through the Looking-Glass?
Sir John Tenniel was a well-known illustrator and political cartoonist of the day. Each illustration was drawn on boxwood and then sent to the engravers, who engraved the block for printing. Curiously, Tenniel’s interpretation of Alice Liddell, for whom the Alice books were written, is nothing like the real Alice, who had dark hair.
What other books did Lewis Carroll write?
Under his real name, Charles wrote many mathematical books, his most important works being Euclid and His Modern Rivals (1879) and Curiosa Mathematica (1888). Writing as Lewis Carroll for children, he produced stories and poems, including Phantasmagoria & Other Poems (1869), a collection of humorous poems; The Hunting of the Snark (1876), which has been called ‘the longest and best sustained nonsense poem in the English language’; A Tangled Tale (1885), designed to interest children in mathematics; and Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, a two-volume novel. But it is for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and the sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (1871), that Lewis Carroll became so well known.