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Lewis Carroll Biography

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DODGSON,  Charles Lutwidge (1832-98). An English author, best known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll. He was born in the village of Daresbury, near Warrington (Chester), England. Educated at Oxford, be took deacon's orders in 1861, and from 1855 to 1881 he was mathematical lecturer at Christ Church. He was an acute mathematician, with. a penchant for the intricate and ingenious, and made to mathematical literature a contribution of high rank in his Euclid and his Modern Rivals (1879), eccentrically cast in dramatic mold and interspersed with jokes. His mathematical publications include a Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry (1866) and An Elementary Treatise on Determinants (1867). But he is best known as the originator of an unique literary genre in his Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), with its continuation in Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1871), both admirably illustrated by Sir John Tenniel. These books display a delightful combination of mad absurdity and subtle fancy. Their grotesque situations compose a peculiar literary tradition. The Hunting of the Snark (1876), an episode none the less enjoyable because its meaning remains unsolved, was nearly as successful. Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) were inferior to the previous works. A dramatization of the Alice volumes by Saville Clarke was presented in London in 1886. For a full account of Dodgson's interesting personality, consult the Life and Letters, ed. by Collingwood (London, 1898), and for a brief account, B. Moses, Lewis Carroll (New York, 1910).