Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (pronounced /ˈdɒdsən/, DOD-sən; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (/ˈkærəl/, KA-rəl), was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon 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 examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and 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 the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.

Antecedents

Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors were 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 during the Napoleonic Wars, when his two sons were hardly more than babies. His mother's name was Frances Jane Lutwidge.[1]

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 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 became a country parson.[2]

Young Charles' father was an active and highly conservative clergyman of the Anglican church who 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 did his best to instill such views in his children. Young Charles, however, was to develop an ambiguous relationship with his father's values and with the Anglican church as a whole.[3]

Dodgson was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury near Warrington, Cheshire, the eldest boy but already the third child of the four-and-a-half-year-old marriage. Eight more children were to follow. 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.

Education

Rugby

During his early youth, young Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family archives 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 age twelve he was sent away to a small private school at nearby Richmond (now part of Richmond School), where he appears to have been happy and settled. But in 1846, 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.[4]

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 Mathematics master.[4]

Oxford

He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and, after an interval that remains unexplained, went on in January 1851 to Oxford, attending his father's old college, Christ Church. He had been at Oxford only 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.[2]

His early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible distraction. He did not always work hard, but was exceptionally gifted and so achievement came easily to him. In 1852 he received a First in Honours Mathematics, and was shortly thereafter 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.[5]

Character and appearance

Health challenges

The young adult Charles Dodgson was about six feet tall, slender, and deemed attractive, with curling brown hair and blue or grey eyes (depending on the account). He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, though this may be on account of a knee injury sustained in middle age. As a very young child, he suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear. At the age of 17, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough, which was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. Another defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his "hesitation", a stammer he acquired in early childhood and which plagued him throughout his life.[6]

The stammer has always been a potent part of the conceptions of Dodgson; it is part of the belief that he stammered only in adult company and was free and fluent with children, but there is no evidence to support this idea.[7] Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer while many adults failed to notice it. Dodgson himself seems to have been far more acutely aware of it than most people he met; it is said he caricatured himself as the Dodo in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, referring to his difficulty in pronouncing his last name, but this is one of the many "facts" often-repeated, for which no firsthand evidence remains. He did indeed refer to himself as the dodo, but that this was a reference to his stammer is simply speculation.[5]

Although Dodgson's stammer troubled him, it was never so debilitating that it prevented him from applying his other personal qualities to do well in society. At a time when people commonly devised their own amusements and when singing and recitation were required social skills, the young Dodgson was well-equipped to be an engaging entertainer. He reportedly could sing tolerably well and was not afraid to do so before an audience. He was adept at mimicry and storytelling, and was reputedly quite good at charades.[6]

Social connections

In the interim between his early published writing and the success of the Alice books, Dodgson began to move in the Pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. He developed a close relationship with 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 children that convinced him to submit the work for publication.[6][8]

Artistic activities

Literature

From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, both contributing heavily to the family magazine Mischmasch and later 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.[6]

In 1856 he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in The Train under the authorship of "Lewis Carroll." This pseudonym was a play on his real name; Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus, from which the name Charles comes.[2]

Alice
"The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo"
The Jabberwock, as illustrated by John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, including the poem "Jabberwocky".

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, over the following years, greatly influence his writing career. Dodgson became close friends with Liddell's wife, Lorina, and their children, particularly the three sisters: Lorina, Edith and Alice Liddell. He was for many years widely assumed to have derived his own "Alice" from Alice Liddell. This was given some apparent substance by the fact the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking Glass spells out her name, and that there are many superficial references to her hidden in the text of both books. Dodgson himself, however, repeatedly denied in later life that his "little heroine" was based on any real child,[9][10] and frequently dedicated his works to girls of his acquaintance, adding their names in acrostic poems at the beginning of the text. Gertrude Chataway's name appears in this form at the beginning of The Hunting of the Snark, and no one has ever suggested this means any of the characters in the narrative are based on her.[10]

Though information is scarce (Dodgson's diaries for the years 1858–1862 are missing), it does seem clear that his friendship with the Liddell 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 Courtenay or Godstow.[11]

It was on one such expedition, on 4 July 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success. Having told the story and been begged by Alice Liddell to write it down, Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground in November 1864.[11]

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 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier.[8] The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist.

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. Indeed, according to one popular story that Dodgson denied decades later, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed Alice In Wonderland so much that she suggested he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.[12][13] He also began earning quite substantial sums of money. However, he continued with his seemingly disliked post at Christ Church.[8]

Late in 1871, a sequel — Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There — was published. (The title page of the first edition erroneously gives "1872" as the date of publication.[14]) Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects the changes in Dodgson's life. His father had recently died (1868), plunging him into a depression that lasted some years.[8]

The Hunting of the Snark

In 1876, Dodgson produced his last great work, The Hunting of the Snark, a fantastical "nonsense" poem, exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of tradesmen, and one beaver, who set off to find the eponymous creature. The painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti reputedly became convinced the poem was about him.[8]

Photography

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.

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.[8]

A recent study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling[15] exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over fifty percent of his surviving work depicts young girls, though this may be a highly distorted figure as approximately 60% of his original photographic portfolio is now missing,[16] so any firm conclusions are difficult. Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, male children and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues and paintings, and trees. His studies of nude children were long presumed lost, but six have since surfaced, five of which have been published and are available online.[17]
Photo of John Everett Millais and his wife Effie Gray with two of their children, signed by Effie (c. 1860)

He also 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, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.[8]

Dodgson abruptly ceased photography in 1880. Over 24 years, he had completely mastered the medium, set up his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, and created around 3,000 images. Fewer than 1,000 have survived time and deliberate destruction. His reasons for abandoning photography remain uncertain.

With the advent of Modernism, tastes changed, and his photography was forgotten from around 1920 until the 1960s. However, his literary works influenced surrealist art, including the theatre of the absurd.[citation needed]

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 then most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other current denominations to one shilling. The folder was then put into a slip case decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. All could be conveniently carried in a pocket or purse. When issued it also included a copy of Carroll's pamphletted lecture, Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.[18][19]

Another invention is a writing tablet called the Nyctograph for use at night that allowed for note-taking in the dark; thus eliminating the trouble of getting out of bed and striking a light when one wakes with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares and system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's design, using letter shapes similar to the Graffiti writing system on a Palm device.

Among the games he devised outside of logic there are a number of word games, including an early version of what today is known as Scrabble. He also appears to have invented, or at least certainly popularised, the Word Ladder (or "doublet" as it was known at first); a form of brain-teaser that is still popular today: the game of changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG.[8]

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 velociam (a type of tricycle); new systems of parliamentary representation;[20] more nearly fair 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 college common room he worked in later in life, which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur for the price paid; a double-sided adhesive strip for things like the fastening of envelopes or mounting things in books; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book placed sideways; and at least two ciphers for cryptography.[8]

Mathematical work

Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in the fields of geometry, matrix algebra and mathematical logic, producing nearly a dozen books. Dodgson also developed new ideas in the study of elections and committees; some of this work was not published until well after his death. He worked as a mathematics tutor at Oxford, an occupation that gave him some financial security.

Philosophy

In 1895, Dodgson developed a philosophical regressus-argument on deductive reasoning in his article "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", which appeared in one of the early volumes of the philosophical journal Mind. The article was reprinted in the same journal a hundred years later, in 1995, with a subsequent article by Simon Blackburn titled Practical Tortoise Raising.[21]

The later years

Over the remaining twenty years of his life, throughout his growing wealth and fame, his existence remained little changed. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and remained in residence there until his death. His last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. It achieved nowhere near the success of the Alice books. Its intricacy was apparently not appreciated by the contemporary readers, and the reviews and its sales, only 13,000 copies, were disappointing.[22][23]

The only occasion on which (as far as is known) he travelled abroad was a trip to Russia in 1867, which he recounts in his "Russian Journal" which was first commercially published in 1935.[24]

He died on 14 January 1898 at his sisters' home, "The Chestnuts" in Guildford, of pneumonia following influenza. He was 2 weeks away from turning 66 years old. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.[8]

Controversies and mysteries

The 'Carroll Myth'

The accepted view of Dodgson's biography has been challenged recently by a group of scholars led by Hugues Lebailly and Karoline Leach and others, who argue that Dodgson's diaries and letters reveal him to have been very different in many key aspects from the traditional image. They established Contrariwise, the Association for new Lewis Carroll studies.[25] Leach's book, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild, in particular has raised a considerable amount of controversy.

Lebailly has endeavoured to set Dodgson's child-photography within the "Victorian Child Cult", which perceived child-nudity as essentially an expression of innocence. Lebailly claims that studies of child nudes were mainstream and fashionable in Dodgson's time and that most photographers, including Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Julia Margaret Cameron, made them as a matter of course. Lebailly continues that child nudes even appeared on Victorian Christmas cards, implying a very different social and aesthetic assessment of such material. Lebailly concludes that it has been an error of Dodgson's biographers to view his child-photography with 20th or 21st century eyes, and to have presented it as some form of personal idiosyncrasy, when it was in fact a response to a prevalent aesthetic and philosophical movement of the time.

Leach posed a new analysis of Dodgson's sexuality. She argues that the allegations of pedophilia rose initially from a misunderstanding of Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea, fostered by Dodgson's various biographers, that he had no interest in adult women. She termed the traditional image of Dodgson "the Carroll Myth".[26] She asserts his diaries show he was also keenly interested in adult women, married and single, and enjoyed several scandalous (by the social standards of his time) relationships with them. In later life, many of those he described as "child-friends" were girls in their late teens and even twenties.[27] She argues that suggestions of pedophilia evolved only many years after his death, when his well-meaning family had suppressed all evidence of his relationships with women in an effort to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man interested only in little girls. Similarly, Leach traces the claim that many of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached the age of 14 to a 1932 biography by Langford Reed,[28] who Leach claims intended to suggest from this that Dodgson was a "pure man" untainted by sexual desire.[29]

Sherry L. Ackerman argues that the Carroll Myth also extends to traditional, mainstream views of Carroll's spirituality.[30] Ackerman proposes that Carroll, rather than being a conservative Victorian Anglican, was actually a mystic. She links Carroll to the nineteenth century Neoplatonic Revival in Great Britain, as well as to accompanying trends of theosophy and spiritualism.

The concept of the Carroll Myth has been opposed by some leading Carroll scholars, in particular Morton N. Cohen and Martin Gardner. Cohen repudiates Leach's position as being simply a plea for the defence, and, in a recent article in the Times Literary Supplement labeled Leach and her supporters as 'revisionists' attempting to rewrite history. Gardner was likewise dismissive in an article published by the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. Similarly, in a review published in Victorian Studies (Vol. 43, No 4), Donald Rackin wrote, "As a piece of biographical scholarship, Karoline Leach's In the Shadow of the Dreamchild is difficult to take seriously".

Priesthood

Dodgson had been groomed for the ordained ministry in the Anglican Church from a very early age and was expected, as a condition of his residency at Christ Church, to take holy orders within four years of obtaining his master's degree. However, he evidently became reluctant to do this. He delayed the process for some time but eventually took deacon's orders on 22 December 1861. But when the time came a year later to progress to priestly orders, Dodgson appealed to the dean for permission not to proceed. This was against college rules, and initially Dean Liddell told him he would have to consult the college ruling body, which would almost undoubtedly have resulted in his being expelled. However, for unknown reasons, Dean Liddell changed his mind overnight and permitted Dodgson to remain at the college, in defiance of the rules.[31] Uniquely amongst Senior Students of his time Dodgson never became a priest.

There is currently no conclusive evidence about why Dodgson rejected the priesthood. Some have suggested his stammer made him reluctant to take the step, because he was afraid of having to preach.[32] Wilson[33] quotes letters by Dodgson describing difficulty in reading lessons and prayers rather than preaching in his own words. But Dodgson did indeed preach in later life, even though not in priest's orders, so it seems unlikely his impediment was a major factor affecting his choice.[citation needed] Wilson also points out that the then Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, who ordained Dodgson, had strong views against members of the clergy going to the theatre, one of Dodgson's great interests. Others have suggested that he was having serious doubts about the Anglican church.[citation needed] It is known that he was interested in minority forms of Christianity (he was an admirer of F.D. Maurice) and "alternative" religions (theosophy).[34] Dodgson became deeply troubled by an unexplained sense of sin and guilt at this time (the early 1860s), and frequently expressed the view in his diaries that he was a "vile and worthless" sinner, unworthy of the priesthood,[35] and this sense of sin and unworthiness may well have had an impact on his decision to abandon the priesthood.

The missing diaries

At least four complete volumes[36] and around seven pages[37] of text are missing from Dodgson's 13 diaries. The loss of the volumes remains unexplained; the pages have been deliberately removed by an unknown hand. Most scholars assume the diary material was removed by family members in the interests of preserving the family name, but this has not been proven.[38] Except for one page, the period of his diaries from which material is missing is between 1853 and 1863 (when Dodgson was 22–32 years old).[39][40]

Many theories have been put forward to explain the missing material. A popular explanation for one particular missing page (27 June 1863) is that it might have been torn out to conceal the belief that Dodgson had proposed marriage on that day to the 11-year-old Alice Liddell. However, there has never been any evidence to suggest this was so, and a paper[41] that was discovered by Karoline Leach in the Dodgson family archive in 1996 offers some evidence to the contrary.
The "cut pages in diary" document, in the Dodgson family archive in Woking, UK.

This paper, known as the "cut pages in diary document", was compiled by various members of Carroll's family after his death. Part of it may have been written at the time the pages were destroyed, though this is unclear. The document offers a brief summary of two diary pages that are now missing, including the one for 27 June 1863. The summary for this page states that Mrs. Liddell told Dodgson there was gossip circulating about him and the Liddell family's governess, as well as about his relationship with "Ina", presumably Alice's older sister, Lorina Liddell. The "break" with the Liddell family that occurred soon after was presumably in response to this gossip.[42][43] An alternate interpretation has been made regarding Carroll's rumored involvement with "Ina": Lorina was also the name of Alice Liddell's mother. What is deemed most crucial and surprising is that the document seems to imply Dodgson's break with the family was not connected with Alice at all. However, until a primary source is discovered, the events of 27 June 1863 remain inconclusive.

Migraine and epilepsy

In his diary for the year 1880 Dodgson recorded experiencing his first episode of migraine with aura, describing very accurately the process of 'moving fortifications' that are a manifestation of the aura stage of the syndrome.[44] Indeed a condition, Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, has been named after it. Also known as micropsia and macropsia, it is a brain condition affecting the way objects are perceived by the mind. For example, an afflicted person may look at a larger object, like a basketball, and perceive it as if it were the size of a golf ball.

Dodgson also suffered two attacks in which he lost consciousness. He was diagnosed by three different doctors; a Dr. Morshead, Dr. Brooks, and Dr. Stedman, believed the attack and a consequent attack to be an "epileptiform" seizure (initially thought to be fainting, but Brooks changed his mind). Some have concluded from this he was a lifetime sufferer from this condition, but there is no evidence of this in his diaries beyond the diagnosis of the two attacks already mentioned.[45] Some authors, in particular Sadi Ranson, have suggested Carroll may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy in which consciousness is not always completely lost, but altered, and in which the symptoms mimic many of the same experiences as Alice in Wonderland. Carroll had at least one incidence in which he suffered full loss of consciousness and awoke with a bloody nose, which he recorded in his diary and noted that the episode left him not feeling himself for "quite sometime afterward". This attack was diagnosed as possibly "epileptiform" and Carroll himself later wrote of his "seizures" in the same diary. However, it is important to remember that no Victorian diagnoses of neurological problems can be relied upon today. Little was known about the workings of the brain and most of the standard diagnostic tests of today were not available in the nineteenth century.

Suggestions of paedophilia
Evelyn Hatch, 1879, age 8, photo by Dodgson

Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (Dodgson's nephew and biographer) wrote:

And now as to the secondary causes which attracted him to children. First, I think children appealed to him because he was pre-eminently a teacher, and he saw in their unspoiled minds the best material for him to work upon. In later years one of his favourite recreations was to lecture at schools on logic; he used to give personal attention to each of his pupils, and one can well imagine with what eager anticipation the children would have looked forward to the visits of a schoolmaster who knew how to make even the dullest subjects interesting and amusing. [2]

Despite comments like this, Dodgson's friendships with young girls, together with his perceived lack of interest in romantic attachments to adult women, and psychological readings of his work – especially his photographs of nude or semi-nude girls[46] – have all led to speculation that he was a paedophile. This possibility has underpinned numerous modern interpretations of his life and work, particularly Dennis Potter's play Alice and his screenplay for the motion picture, Dreamchild, and even more importantly Robert Wilson's Alice, and a number of recent biographies, including Michael Bakewell's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1996), Donald Thomas's Lewis Carroll: A Portrait with Background (1995), and Morton N. Cohen's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1995). All of these works more or less unequivocally assume that Dodgson was a paedophile, albeit a repressed and celibate one. Cohen claims Dodgson's "sexual energies sought unconventional outlets", and further 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.[46]

Cohen notes 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).

Cohen and other biographers argue that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the 11-year-old Alice Liddell, and that this was the cause of the unexplained "break" with the family in June 1863.[47] But there has never been significant evidence to support the idea, and the 1996 discovery of the "cut pages in diary document" (see above) might imply that the 1863 "break" had less to do with Alice, but was perhaps connected with rumours involving her older sister Lorina, or possibly their governess.

Some writers, e.g., Derek Hudson and Roger Lancelyn Green, stop short of identifying Dodgson as a paedophile, but concur that he had a passion for small female children and next to no interest in the adult world.

The entire evidential basis for Dodgson's perceived 'obsession' with female children has been challenged in the last ten years by several writers and scholars (see the 'Carroll Myth' above)

Works

Literary works

* A Tangled Tale
* Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
* Facts
* He thought he saw an elephant
* Rhyme? And Reason? (also published as Phantasmagoria)
* Pillow Problems
* Sylvie and Bruno
* Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
* The Hunting of the Snark (1876)
* Three Sunsets and Other Poems
* Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (includes "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter") (1871)
* What the Tortoise Said to Achilles

Mathematical works

* A Syllabus of Plane Algebraic Geometry (1860)
* The Fifth Book of Euclid Treated Algebraically (1858 and 1868)
* An Elementary Treatise on Determinants, With Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Equations
* Euclid and his Modern Rivals (1879), both literary and mathematical in style
* Symbolic Logic Part I
* Symbolic Logic Part II (published posthumously)
* The Game of Logic
* Some Popular Fallacies about Vivisection
* Curiosa Mathematica I (1888)
* Curiosa Mathematica II (1892)
* The Theory of Committees and Elections, collected, edited, analyzed, and published in 1958, by Duncan Black

See also

* Barbershop paradox
* Dodgson condensation
* Lewis Carroll identity
* Lewis Carroll Shelf Award
* RGS Worcester and The Alice Ottley School – Miss Ottley, the first Headmistress of The Alice Ottley School, was a friend of Lewis Carroll, and as such, one of the school's houses was named after him.

Alfred C. Berol Collection of Lewis Carroll

The Alfred C. Berol Collection of Lewis Carroll is housed in the Fales Library at New York University. One of the foremost collections of Lewis Carroll materials in the United States, it contains Carroll's correspondence, drawings, manuscripts (firsts, autographed copies, presentation copies, and proofs),and photographs. It also includes drawings by his illustrators Harry Furniss and John Tenniel. Additionally, the collection contains a number of ephemeral materials related to Lewis Carroll. This ephemera illustrates Carroll's work's contemporary and enduring cultural impact, as well as Alfred C. Berol's correspondence and notes on the gathering of the materials in the collection.[48] The Fales Library guide to the Alfred C. Berol Collection of Lewis Carroll.

Notes

1. ^ "Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll): A Brief Biography". Victorianweb.org. 2004-11-25. http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carroll/bio1.html. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
2. ^ a b c Cohen, Morton N. (26 November 1996). Lewis Carroll: A Biography. Vintage Books. pp. 30–35. ISBN 978-0-679-74562-4.
3. ^ Cohen, Morton N. (26 November 1996). Lewis Carroll: A Biography. Vintage Books. pp. 200–2. ISBN 978-0-679-74562-4.
4. ^ a b Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson. The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, 18.
5. ^ a b Leach, Karoline In the Shadow of the Dreamchild Ch. 2.
6. ^ a b c d Leach, Karoline In the Shadow of the Dreamchild Ch. 2
7. ^ Leach, p. 91
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cohen, Morton N. (26 November 1996). Lewis Carroll: A Biography. Vintage Books. pp. 100–4. ISBN 978-0-679-74562-4. [page needed]
9. ^ Cohen, Morton N. (ed), The Letters of Lewis Carroll, London: Macmillan, 1979.
10. ^ a b Leach, Karoline In the Shadow of the Dreamchild Ch. 5 "The Unreal Alice"
11. ^ a b Leach, Karoline In the Shadow of the Dream Child Ch. 4
12. ^ Wilson, Robin (17 November 2008). Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life. W.W. Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06027-0.
13. ^ "Lewis Carroll – Logician, Nonsense Writer, Mathematician and Photographer". The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. BBC. 26 August 2005. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A4462670. Retrieved 2009-02-12.
14. ^ Cohen, Morton (24 June 2009). Introduction to "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass". Random House. ISBN 978-0-553-21345-4.
15. ^ Taylor, Roger; Wakeling, Edward (25 February 2002). Lewis Carroll, Photographer. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-07443-6.
16. ^ how much evidence is there?[dead link]
17. ^ "The Photography of Lewis Carroll — The Photography of Lewis Carroll". Photographyoflewiscarroll.googlepages.com. http://photographyoflewiscarroll.googlepages.com/. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
18. ^ Flodden W. Heron, "Lewis Carroll, Inventor of Postage Stamp Case" in Stamps, vol. 26, no. 12, 25 March 1939
19. ^ "Lewis Carroll Related Postage Stamps". The Lewis Carroll Society. 28 April 2005. http://lewiscarrollsociety.org.uk/pages/inspired/stamps.htm. Retrieved 2009-02-12.
20. ^ Black, Duncan; McLean, Iain; McMillan, Alistair; Monroe, Burt L.; Dodgson, Charles Lutwidge (1996). A Mathematical Approach to Proportional Representation. ISBN 978-0-7923-9620-8. http://books.google.com/?id=PN1dAAAACAAJ.
21. ^ Carroll, Lewis, "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", Mind n.s. 4 (1895), 278-280; rpt. in Mind 104 (1995), 691-693. Simon Blackburn, "Practical Tortoise Raising", Mind 104 (1995), 695 ff. - [1]
22. ^ Angelica Shirley Carpenter (2002). Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass. Lerner. p. 98.ISBN 978-0822500735.
23. ^ Thomas Christensen (1991). "Dodgson's Dodges". rightreading.com.
24. ^ Chronology of Works of Lewis Carroll[dead link]
25. ^ "Contrariwise, the Association for new Lewis Carroll studies". Carrollmyth.com. http://carrollmyth.com/contrariwise/index.html. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
26. ^ "The Carroll Myth". http://carrollmyth.com/. Retrieved 2009-02-12.
27. ^ Leach, pp. 16–17
28. ^ Leach, p. 33
29. ^ Leach, p. 32
30. ^ Ackerman, Sherry L. (2008). Behind the Looking Glass. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 1-84718-486-3. [page needed]
31. ^ Dodgson's MS diaries, volume 8, 22–24 October 1862
32. ^ Cohen, Morton N. (26 November 1996). Lewis Carroll: A Biography. Vintage Books. p. 263. ISBN 978-0-679-74562-4.
33. ^ Wilson, Robin (17 November 2008). Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life. W.W. Norton. pp. 103–104. ISBN 978-0-393-06027-0.
34. ^ Leach, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild (new edition), 2009, p. 134
35. ^ Dodgson's MS diaries, volume 8, see prayers scattered throughout the text
36. ^ Leach, p. 48
37. ^ Leach, p. 51
38. ^ Leach, pp. 48–51
39. ^ Leach, p. 52
40. ^ Wakeling, Edward (April 2003). "The Real Lewis Carroll / A Talk given to the Lewis Carroll Society". 1855 ... 1856 ... 1857 ... 1858 ... 1862 ... 1863. http://www.wakeling.demon.co.uk/page3-real-lewiscarroll.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-14.
41. ^ Dodgson Family Collection, Cat. No. F/17/1. "Cut Pages in Diary[dead link]". (For an account of its discovery see The Times Literary Supplement, 3 May 1996.)
42. ^ Leach, Karoline In the Shadow of the Dreamchild pp. 170–2.
43. ^ "Text available on-line". Looking for Lewis Carroll. http://www.lewiscarroll.cc/cutpages.html. Retrieved 2007-05-04. [dead link]
44. ^ "The Diaries of Lewis Carroll", vol 9 p. 52
45. ^ "The Diaries of Lewis Carroll", vol 9
46. ^ a b Cohen, Morton N. (26 November 1996). Lewis Carroll: A Biography. Vintage Books. pp. 166–167, 254–255. ISBN 978-0-679-74562-4.
47. ^ Cohen, Morton N. (26 November 1996). Lewis Carroll: A Biography. Vintage Books. pp. 100–4. ISBN 978-0-679-74562-4.
48. ^ "Guide to The Alfred C. Berol Collection of Lewis Carroll 1845–1993 MSS 57". Dlib.nyu.edu. http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/fales/berol.html. Retrieved 2010-03-11.

References

* Black, Duncan (1958). The Circumstances in which Rev. C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) wrote his Three Pamphlets and Appendix: Text of Dodgson's Three Pamphlets and of 'The Cyclostyled Sheet' in The Theory of Committees and Elections, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Bowman, Isa (1899), The Story of Lewis Carroll, Told by the Real Alice in Wonderland, London: Dent
* Cohen, Morton N. (1995), Lewis Carroll: A Biography, London: Macmillan. (ISBN 0-333-62926-4)
* Collingwood, Stuart Dodgson (1898), The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll, London: T. Fisher Unwin
* Dogson, Charles L., Euclid and His Modern Rivals; Macmillan, 1879 (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 9781108001007)
* Graham-Smith, Darien (2005), Contextualising Carroll, University of Wales, Bangor: PhD Thesis ([3])
* Huxley, Francis (1976), The Raven and the Writing Desk. (ISBN 0-06-012113-0).
* Kelly, Richard, Lewis Carroll. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990.
* Kelly, Richard, ed. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000.
* Leach, Karoline (1999), In the Shadow of the Dreamchild: A New Understanding of Lewis Carroll, London: Peter Owen Publishers
* Lennon, Florence Becker (1947), Lewis Carroll, London: Cassell
* Reed, Langford (1932), The Life of Lewis Carroll, London: W. and G. Foyle
* Sunghyun Kim, 'Political Unconscious in Fantastic Narrative: Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' (Korean), Yonsei University Graduate School, 2005
* Taylor, Alexander L., Knight (1952), The White Knight, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd
* Taylor, Roger & Wakeling, Edward, Lewis Carroll, Photographer. Princeton University Press, 2002. (ISBN 0691074437). Catalogues nearly every Carroll photograph known to be still in existence.
* Wilson, Robin (2008). Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 9780713997576.
* Wullschläger, Jackie, Inventing Wonderland, (ISBN 0-7432-2892-8)—also looks at Edward Lear (of the "nonsense" verses), J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan), Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows), and A. A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh).
* n.n., Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll. Yale University Press & SFMOMA, 2004. (Places Carroll firmly in the art photography tradition.)

External links

* The Fales Library Guide to the Alfred C. Berol Collection of Lewis Carroll
* Works by or about Lewis Carroll in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
* The Carroll Myth background on the current controversy.
* The Poems of Lewis Carroll
* The Photography of Lewis Carroll
* The Lewis Carroll Society
* Lewis Carroll Society of North America
* Lewis Carroll at victorianweb.org
* Works by Lewis Carroll at Project Gutenberg
* Sewell, Byron W.; Susan R. Sewell. "Byron W. Sewell and Susan R. Sewell: A Preliminary Inventory of Their Collection of Lewis Carroll at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center". Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original on 2009-09-12. . Retrieved 2009-09-12.
* Archival material relating to Lewis Carroll listed at the UK National Register of Archives
* Lewis Carroll online exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
* Lewis Carroll's Shifting Reputation