Lewis Carroll
Pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832, Daresbury, Cheshire – 14 January 1898, Guildford, Surrey). Victorian poet, mathematician, writer, photographer, and children's author. One of the protagonists of nonsense literature. Creator of Alice and her Adventures.
Early Life
Lewis Carroll was born the first son and the third of 11 children of the clergyman Charles Dodgson and his wife (and first cousin) Frances. There is generally very little reliable information about Carroll's childhood. He started attending school at the age of 12, which might appear very late from a modern perspective, but probably was not unusual at all, as education was not compulsory in those days. Carroll had probably been tutored by his father before (a graduated mathematician as well).
Education
At the age of 14 Lewis Carroll went to the famous public school Rugby, Warwickshire. Eventually, in 1850 he went to Christ Church, Oxford, the same college his father went to as well. There he stayed until 1881, first as a student and subsequently, after his graduation, as a don of mathematics.
Later Life
In 1855, around the time when Carroll graduated and started teaching mathematics, Henry Liddell became the new dean of Christ Church and he and his family became friends of Lewis Carroll. He as well developed a possibly rather close relationship with three of Henry Liddell's young daughters Edith, Lorina and Alice. It is widely believed that Alice was the muse and model for Lewis Carroll's world wide best-sellers Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). His pseudonym “Lewis Carroll” first appeared in the magazine The Train in 1856. During the 1860s, he started to make photography his hobby. In 1881, Carroll resigned his mathematical lectureship and from then on spent his whole time with writing and mathematical studies. He died unexpectedly at the age of 65.
The “Carroll-Myth” and his incomplete diaries
The term “Carroll-Myth” mainly refers to the relatively recent assumption that a 'myth' has been created, about Lewis Carroll's attitude towards children in general and young girls in particular by some of his first biographers. Carroll is sometimes depicted as almost paedophile, especially because of numerous of his works as a photographer which portray nude girls. His affinity towards young girls is disputed nowadays. This might inter alia be due to the supposition of Carroll's preference for young female models being based on a generally spread and practised “Victorian Child Cult” in those days (Lebailly 6). Another fact, which caused distrust in what is told about Carroll by some of his biographers is the partial lack of reliable information about some sections of his life. Carroll kept diaries throughout almost his entire life and even numbered them. However, some of these volumes are lost now and it seems extremely hard to reconstruct the periods of Carroll's life they covered.
Sources
Becker Lennon, Florence. The Life of Lewis Carroll. New York: Dover Publications, 1972.
Leach, Karoline. In the Shadow of the Dreamchild: a New Understanding of Lewis Carroll. London: Peter Owen, 1999.
Lebailly, Hugues. “C.L. Dodgson and the Victorian Cult of the Child”. The Carrollian, The Lewis Carroll Journal 4 (1999): 3-31 <http://contrariwise.wild-reality.net/articles/Charles%20Dodgson%20And%20The%20Victorian%20Cult%20Of%20The%20Child.pdf> last visited Nov. 27, 2010
Woolf, Jenny. The Mystery of Lewis Carroll: Understanding the Author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. London: Haus Publishing, 2010.
Links
Lewis Carroll web pages
| The Association for New Lewis Carroll Studies
| The Lewis Carroll Society of North America
| The Lewis Carroll section of Victorianweb.org
The "Carroll Myth"
Works by Lewis Carroll
| The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll (large pdf-file)
| Lewis Carroll's works on Openlibrary.org
| Examplary photographs of young girls (including Alice Liddell)