Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are still in print today, over a century after their publication. They remain, next to the Bible and the works of Shakespeare,
among the world’s most widely translated works of literature. Translations are available in over seventy languages, including
Yiddish and Swahili.
Several words from Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poems have become part of the English language, such as ‘chortle’, which combines
‘snort’ and ‘chuckle’, from the poem ‘Jabberwocky’, and ‘galumph’ which combines ‘gallop’ and ‘triumph’.
Dodgson was also an inventor. He devised the Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case in 1889 – a wallet with slots for stamps – to
encourage letter-writing. He is also said to have popularized the Word Ladder game (changing one word into another by altering
one letter at a time).
Lewis Carroll lies buried in the Mount Cemetery, Guildford. The plaque outside his Guildford home, The Chestnuts, was designed by local children, who have managed to incorporate many of his characters. However, an attempt was made to steal
the plaque in 2005 so it was removed for safekeeping.
From January 1861 until his death in 1898, Lewis Carroll kept records of all the letters that he wrote. The record contains
98,721 letters!