Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Carroll in 1857
Born:	January 27 1832(1832-01-27) Daresbury, Cheshire, England
Died:	January 14 1898 (aged 65) Guildford, Surrey, England
Occupation(s):	Author, illustrator, poet, mathematician, photographer, teacher, inventor
Literary genre:	Children's literature fantasy literature mathematical logic poetry literary nonsense linear algebra voting theory

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, mathematician, logician, clergyman, and photographer who is best remembered today as one of the world's most beloved authors of children's stories and nonsense poetry. Carroll's genius for surreal storytelling, wordplay, and pure humor has made him one of the most enduring and critically acclaimed of all writers in the genre. His most famous works 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."

Carroll's 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, and he has influenced a wide range of artists, from other children's writers to literary giants such as Jorge Luis Borges and James Joyce.

Life

Antecedents

Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with some Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors were British Army officers or Church of England clergymen. 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, when his two sons were hardly more than babies.

The elder of these sons—yet another Charles—was Carroll's father. He reverted to the other family business and took holy orders. He went to Rugby School, and from there 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

Young Charles Dodgson was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Warrington, Cheshire, the oldest boy and 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 twenty-five years.

In his early years, young Dodgson 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. He also suffered from a stammer—a condition shared by his siblings—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 greatly depressed.

Oxford

He left Rugby at the end of 1849 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.

His early academic career veered between high-octane promise and irresistible distraction. He may not always have worked hard, but he was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him. In 1852, he received a first in Honour Moderations, and shortly after he was nominated to a Studentship by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey. However, a little later he failed an important scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study. Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the next twenty-six years. The income was good, but the work bored him. Many of his pupils were older and richer than he was, and almost all of them were uninterested. However, despite early unhappiness, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death.

Later years and death

Over the final twenty years of his life, throughout his growing wealth and fame, Dodgson's existence remained little changed. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, remaining in residence there until his death. His last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. Its extraordinary convolutions and apparent confusion baffled most readers, achieving little success.

He died at his sisters' home in Guildford on January 14 1898 of pneumonia following influenza. He was not quite sixty-six years old. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.

Dodgson the artist

Literature

From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, sending them to various magazines, 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 this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and 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.

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."

Alice books

In the same year, 1856, a new Dean, Henry Liddell, arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson's life, and greatly influence his writing career over the following years. Dodgson became close friends with the mother, Lorina, and the children, particularly the three sisters: Ina, Edith, and Alice Liddell. Although Dodgson himself later denied his "little heroine" was based on any real child, he is widely assumed to have derived his own "Alice" from Alice Liddell. There is an acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking Glass which supports this view. Reading downward, taking the first letter of each line, spells out Alice's name in full. The poem has no title in Through the Looking Glass but is usually referred to by its first line, "A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky."

Though information is scarce, it does seem clear that his friendship with the family was an important part of his life in the late 1850s, and he grew into the habit of taking the children (first the boy, Harry, and later the three girls) on rowing trips to nearby Nuneham or Godstow.

It was on one such expedition, on July 4, 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success. Having told the story to Alice Liddell, she begged him to write it down. Dodgson eventually presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground, in November 1864.

Before this, the family of friend and mentor, George MacDonald, read Dodgson's incomplete manuscript and the enthusiasm of the MacDonald children encouraged Dodgson to seek publication. In 1863, he had taken the unfinished manuscript to Macmillan the publisher, who liked it immediately. After the possible alternative titles Alice Among the Fairies and Alice's Golden Hour were rejected, the work was finally published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in 1865. The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently realized that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist.

Alice in Wonderland, illustration by John Tenniel

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a work of children's literature which is generally acclaimed as Dodgson's masterpiece. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into Wonderland, a fantasy realm populated by talking playing cards, anthropomorphic creatures, and other fantastical beings.

The tale is fraught with satirical allusions to Dodgson's friends and to life in the United Kingdom during the mid nineteenth century in general. The Wonderland described in the story is a place where logic and rules and reality are turned upside-down in ways that have made the story enduringly popular with adults, as well as children.

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.

Alice was first published on July 4, 1865, exactly three years after the Dodgson and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth rowed in a boat up the River Thames with three little girls:

• Lorina Charlotte Liddell (aged 13) ("Prima" in the book's prefatory verse)
• Alice Pleasance Liddell (aged 10) ("Secunda" in the prefatory verse)
• Edith Mary Liddell (aged 8) ("Tertia" in the prefatory verse)

The journey had started at Folly Bridge near Oxford, ending five miles away in the village of Godstow. To while away time the Reverend Dodgson told the girls a story that, not so coincidentally, featured a bored little girl named Alice who goes looking for an adventure.

The girls loved the story so much that they asked Dodgson to write it down for them. He eventually did so and on November 26, 1864, he presented Alice with the first manuscript version of the story, which was titled Alice's Adventures Under Ground. According to Dodgson's diaries, in the spring of 1863, he gave the unfinished manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground to his friend and mentor George MacDonald, whose children loved it. On MacDonald's advice, Dodgson decided to submit Alice for publication. Before he had even finished the manuscript for Alice Liddell, he was already expanding the 18,000 word original to 35,000 words, most notably adding the episodes about the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Tea-Party. In 1865, Dodgson's tale was published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by "Lewis Carroll."

The entire print run sold out quickly. Alice was a publishing sensation, beloved by children and adults alike. Among its first avid readers were the young Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria. The book has never been out of print since. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has been translated into over 50 languages, including Esperanto and Faroese. There have now been over a hundred editions of the book, as well as countless adaptations in other media, especially theater and film.

Lewis Carroll, 1874

The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego, Lewis Carroll soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. He also began earning quite substantial sums of money. However, perhaps oddly, he didn't use this income as a means of abandoning his post at Christ Church which he apparently disliked.

In 1872, a sequel—Through the Looking-Glass—was published. Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects the changes in Dodgson's life. His father had recently died (1868), plunging him into a depression that would last some years.

The Hunting of the Snark

In 1876, Dodgson produced his next work, The Hunting of the Snark, a fantastical "nonsense" poem, with illustrations by Henry Holiday, exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of nine tradesmen and one beaver, who set off to find the snark. It received largely mixed reviews from Carroll's contemporary reviewers, but was enormously popular with the public, having been reprinted seventeen times between 1876 and 1908, and has seen various adaptations into musicals, opera, theatre, plays and music. Painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti reputedly became convinced that the poem was about him.

Sylvie and Bruno

In 1895, 30 years after the publication of his first books, Carroll attempted a comeback, producing a two-volume tale of the fairy siblings Sylvie and Bruno. Carroll entwines two plots set in two alternative worlds, one set in rural England and the other in the fairytale kingdoms of Elfland, Outland, and others. The fairytale world satirises English society and, more specifically, the world of academia. Sylvie and Bruno came out in two volumes and is considered a lesser work, although it has remained in print for over a century.

Photography (1856–1880)

Photo of Alice Liddell taken by Lewis Carroll (1858)

In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography under the influence first of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later of his Oxford friend Reginald Southey. He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years. A study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculated that just over half of Dodgson's surviving work depicts young girls. Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, boys, and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues, paintings, and trees. Many of his pictures of children were taken in the Liddell garden because natural sunlight was required for good exposures.

Dodgson found photography to be a useful entrée into higher social circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Maggie Spearman, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday, Lord Salisbury, and Alfred Tennyson.

By the time that Dodgson abruptly ceased photography (1880, after 24 years), he had established his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, created around 3,000 images, and become an amateur master of the medium, though fewer than 1,000 images have survived time and deliberate destruction. He often altered his photographs through blurring techniques or by painting over them. He exerted his agency of this craft by literally rewriting the text created by the image to produce a new dialogue about childhood. However, popular taste changed with the advent of Modernism, affecting the types of photographs that he produced.

Mathematical work

A posthumous portrait of Lewis Carroll by Hubert von Herkomer, based on photographs. This painting now hangs in the Great Hall of Christ Church, Oxford.

Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in the fields of geometry, linear and matrix algebra, mathematical logic, and recreational mathematics, producing nearly a dozen books under his real name. Dodgson also developed new ideas in linear algebra, probability, and the study of elections (e.g., Dodgson's method) and committees. Some of this work was not published until well after his death.

Mathematical logic

His work in the field of mathematical logic attracted renewed interest in the late twentieth century. Martin Gardner's book on logic machines and diagrams and William Warren Bartley's posthumous publication of the second part of Dodgson's symbolic logic book have sparked a reevaluation of Dodgson's contributions to symbolic logic. It is recognized that in his Symbolic Logic Part II, Dodgson introduced the Method of Trees, the earliest modern use of a truth tree.

Algebra

In 1866, he discovered Dodgson condensation, an algebraic method of evaluating determinants of square matrices. The method in the case of an n × n matrix is to construct an (n − 1) × (n − 1) matrix, an (n − 2) × (n − 2), and so on, finishing with a 1 × 1 matrix, which has one entry, the determinant of the original matrix.

Recreational mathematics

The discovery in the 1990s of additional ciphers that Dodgson had constructed, in addition to his "Memoria Technica," showed that he had employed sophisticated mathematical ideas in their creation.

Inventions

To promote letter writing, Dodgson invented "The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case" in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other current denominations up to one shilling. The folder was then put into a slipcase decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. It was intended to organize stamps wherever one stored their writing implements; Carroll expressly notes in Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing it was not intended to be carried in a pocket or purse, as the most common individual stamps could easily be carried on their own.

Reconstructed nyctograph, with scale demonstrated by a 5 euro cent

Another invention was a writing tablet called the nyctograph that allowed note-taking in the dark, thus eliminating the need to get out of bed and strike a light when one woke with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares and a system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's design.

Dodgson devised a number of games, including an early version of what today is known as Scrabble. The games and puzzles of Lewis Carroll were the subject of Martin Gardner's March 1960 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Other items include a rule for finding the day of the week for any date; a means for justifying right margins on a typewriter; a steering device for a velociman (a type of tricycle); fairer elimination rules for tennis tournaments; a new sort of postal money order; rules for reckoning postage; rules for a win in betting; rules for dividing a number by various divisors; a cardboard scale for the Senior Common Room at Christ Church which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur for the price paid; a double-sided adhesive strip to fasten envelopes or mount things in books; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book placed sideways; and at least two ciphers for cryptography.

Legacy

Lewis Carroll memorial window (Mad Hatter, Dormouse and March Hare pictured) at All Saints' Church, Daresbury, Cheshire

There are societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life.

In 1982, his great-nephew unveiled a memorial stone to him in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

The Lewis Carroll Centenary Wood near his birthplace in Daresbury opened in 2000. As Carroll was born in All Saints' Vicarage, he is commemorated at All Saints' Church, Daresbury by stained glass windows depicting characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The Lewis Carroll Centre, attached to the church, was opened in March 2012.

A private collection of thousands of items connected with Lewis Carroll, including letters, photographs, illustrations and books, were donated to Christ Church, part of the University of Oxford, in 2025.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bartley, William Warren. Lewis Carroll's Symbolic Logic. Clarkson Potter, 1986. ISBN 978-0517533635
• Carroll, Lewis. Martin Gardner (ed.). The Annotated Hunting of the Snark. W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. ISBN 978-0393062427
• Carroll, Lewis. Richard Kelly (ed.). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Broadview Press, 2000. ISBN 155111223X
• Carroll, Lewis, and Michael Everson. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: An edition printed in the Nyctographic Square Alphabet devised by Lewis Carroll. Evertype, 2011. ISBN 978-1904808787
• Clark, Anne. Lewis Carroll: A Biography. Dent, 1979. ISBN 978-0460043021
• Cohen, Morton N. The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll. Palgrave Macmillan, 1989. ISBN 0333496930
• Cohen, Morton N. Reflections in a Looking Glass: A Centennial Celebration of Lewis Carroll, Photographer. New York: Aperture, 1998. ISBN 978-0893817961
• Cohen, Morton N. Lewis Carroll: A Biography. London: Macmillan, 1995. ISBN 0679745629
• Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson. The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll. Kessinger Publishing, 2004 (original 1898). ISBN 1417926252
• Huxley, Francis. The Raven and the Writing Desk. Harper & Row, 1976. ISBN 0060121130
• Leach, Karoline. In the Shadow of the Dreamchild: A New Understanding of Lewis Carroll. London: Peter Owen, 1999. ISBN 0720610443
• Lennon, Florence Becker. Lewis Carroll. ‎ Dover Publications Inc., 1973. ISBN 048622838X
• Reed, Langford. 1932. The Life of Lewis Carroll. London: W. and G. Foyle. ISBN 0848222512
• Smith, Lindsay. Lewis Carroll: Photography On The Move. Reaktion Books, 2016. ISBN 978-1780235196
• Taylor, Alexander L. The White Knight: A study of C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). R. West, 1977. ISBN 0849227003
• Taylor, Roger, and Edward Wakeling. Lewis Carroll, Photographer. Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN 0691074437
• Williams, Sidney Herbert, and Falconer Madan. Handbook of the Literature of the Rev. C.L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). Oxford University Press, 1931. ASIN B00085LY84
• Winchester, Simon. The Alice Behind Wonderland. Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0195396195
• Wullschläger, Jackie. Inventing Wonderland: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne. Free Press, 2001. ISBN 0743228928

External links

All links retrieved April 28, 2026.

• About Alice Liddell
• Poems by Lewis Carroll Poetry Foundation
• The Lewis Carroll Society
• Lewis Carroll Society of North America
• Lewis Carroll's Logic Game
• Contrariwise; the Association for New Lewis Carroll Studies
• Works by Lewis Carroll. Project Gutenberg
• Lewis Carroll Find a Grave

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