The world famous author of Alices Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).
He was born in Cheshire in the town of Daresbury. He was born in 1832 and lived to be 66.
He was well known for: Childrens Fiction Illustration
From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, 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 such as 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. Sometime after 1850, he did write puppet plays for his siblings entertainment, of which one has survived: La Guida di Bragia.
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 comes the name Charles. The transition went as follows: Charles Lutwidge translated into Latin as Carolus Ludovicus. This was then translated back into English as Carroll Lewis and then reversed to make Lewis Carroll. This pseudonym was chosen by editor Edmund Yates from a list of four submitted by Dodgson, the others being Edgar Cuthwellis, Edgar U. C. Westhill, and Louis Carroll.
In 1856, Dean (i.e., head of the college) Henry Liddellarrived at Christ Church, bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgsons life over the following years, and would greatly influence his writing career. Dodgson became close friends with Liddells wife Lorina and their children, particularly the three sisters Lorina, Edith, and Alice Liddell. He was widely assumed for many years to have derived his own Alice from Alice Liddell the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking-Glass spells out her name in full, and there are also many superficial references to her hidden in the text of both books. It has been noted that Dodgson himself repeatedly denied in later life that his little heroine was based on any real child, and he frequently dedicated his works to girls of his acquaintance, adding their names in acrostic poems at the beginning of the text. Gertrude Chataways name appears in this form at the beginning of The Hunting of the Snark, and it is not suggested that this means that any of the characters in the narrative are based on her.
Information is scarce (Dodgsons diaries for the years 1858–1862 are missing), but it seems 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 on rowing trips (first the boy Harry, and later the three girls) accompanied by an adult friend to nearby Nuneham Courtenay or Godstow.
It was on one such expedition on 4 July 1862 that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and greatest commercial success. He told the story to Alice Liddell and she begged him to write it down, and Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled Alices Adventures Under Ground in November 1864.
Before this, the family of friend and mentor George MacDonald read Dodgsons 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 were rejected – Alice Among the Fairies and Alices Golden Hour – the work was finally published as Alices Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier. The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist. Annotated versions provide insights into many of the ideas and hidden meanings that are prevalent in these books. Critical literature has often proposed Freudian interpretations of the book as a descent into the dark world of the subconscious, as well as seeing it as a satire upon contemporary mathematical advances.
The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgsons 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, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed Alice in Wonderland so much that she commanded that 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. Dodgson himself vehemently denied this story, commenting ... It is utterly false in every particular: nothing even resembling it has occurred and it is unlikely for other reasons. As T. B. Strong comments in a Times article, It would have been clean contrary to all his practice to identify the author of Alice with the author of his mathematical works. He also began earning quite substantial sums of money but continued with his seemingly disliked post at Christ Church.
Late in 1871, he published the sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. (The title page of the first edition erroneously gives 1872 as the date of publication.) Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects changes in Dodgsons life. His fathers death in 1868 plunged him into a depression that lasted some years.
In 1876, Dodgson produced his next great work, The Hunting of the Snark, a fantastical nonsense poem 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 Carrolls 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.
In 1895, 30 years after publication of his masterpieces, 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 satirizes 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.