Lewis Carroll

Creator of Alice in Wonderland

Biography Written by Becca L., Fantasy Editor


Biography

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, known to the literary world as Lewis Carroll, was born on January 27, 1832 and died on January 14, 1898.

He was the son of a clergyman, and the third-born of eleven children. As a child he entertained himself and his family with magic tricks, marionette shows and poems written for homemade newspapers.

His parents were Charles Dodgson (1800-1868) and Frances Jane Lutwidge (1804-1851). His ten brothers and sisters were Frances Jane (Fanny), (1828-1903), Elizabeth Lucy (1830-1916), Caroline Hume (1833-1904), Mary Charlotte (1835-1911), Skeffington Hume (1836-1919), Wilfred Longley (1838-1914), Louisa Fletcher (1840-1930), Margaret Anne Ashley (1841-1915), Henrietta Harington (1843-1922), and Edwin Heron (1846-1918).

He attended Rugby School from 1846-1850. He then graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1854. He remained there as a lecturer of mathematics, and also wrote treatises and guides for students. He took deacons's orders in 1861, but never became a priest.

He invented his penname by translating his first two names into the Latin "Carolus Lodovicus" and then anglicizing it to Lewis Carroll.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865. The sequel, Through the Looking Glass, was published in 1871.

He was a skilled mathemetician, logician and a pioneering photographer.


Bibliography


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