Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (January 27, 1832 – January 14, 1898), better known by the pen name Lewis Carroll, was a British author, mathematician, logician, Anglican clergyman and photographer.

His best known writings come ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the comic poem The Hunting of the Snark'', and the nonsense poem Jabberwocky.

His facility at word play, logic, and fantasy has delighted audiences ranging from a virtually all naïve to the virtually all sophisticated. His works use at times remained popular since it were published & use influenced non single children's literature, but also a number of major 20th century writers such as James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges.

There are societies dedicated to the enjoyment & promotion of Lewis Carroll's works inside numerous area of the globe including North America, Japan, the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

Upbringing
Dodgson's personal was preponderantly northern English, with a select few Irish connections. Conservativist & High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ascendant belonged to a deuce traditional English upper-middle class professions: a army & the Church. His groovy-grandfather, likewise Charles Dodgson, experienced risen through the ranks of the church to turn into the bishop; his grandfather, an additional Charles, experienced been an army captain, killed witharound action in 1803 while his two sons were hardly to a higher degree toddlers.

A elder one—however an additional Charles—reverted to the more personal business & took sanctum orders. He attend Westminster School, and thence to Christ Church, Oxford. He was mathematically gifted and won the double 1st degree which stand been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead he married his 1st cousinside in 1827 & retired into obscurity as a united states parson.

Young Charles was natural in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Cheshire, the oldest son however already the third baby of the 4-&-a-half season old marriage. Eight sir thomas more were to watch &, improbably for the instance, everthing of the babies—heptad girls & quartet boys— survived into adulthood. Once Charles was Eleven his father was given a dwelling of Croft-on-Tees in north Yorkshire, and a whole personal moved to the spacious Parsonage. This remained their house for the next Xxv years.

Dodgson senior processed a bit of progress through the ranks of the church: he published a select few sermons, translated Tertullian, became an Archdeacon of Ripon Cathedral, and taking part himself, for instance influentially, in a incredible 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 he did his better to instil such views around his toddlers.

In the early years immature Charles was educated home. His "reading lists" preserved in a personal testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of vii the kid was reading ''The Pilgrim's Progress. These are typically said that he was naturally left-handed & suffered severe psychological trauma by existence forced to counteract this tendency, however no documental grounds to believe to trend lines this. Charles too suffered from either an additional disablement, the stammer that typically influenced his social life throughout his years. At 12 he was sent away to the little common soldier school at nearby Richmond, in which he appears to keep close at h& been happy and settled. However within 1845, young Dodgsin moved on to Rugby School, where he wwhen plain less happy, for as he wrote a select few years when allowing a place:

We can't say ... that any earthly considerations would cause pine tree state to last across the troika years once again ... We personally could honestly say that whenever I stand been ... assure from either annoyance when asleep, a hardships of the every day life would keep around been comparative trifles to bear.''

A nature and severity of this nocturnal 'annoyance' might probably never at present become fully understood, however it can be that he is finely on to occasionally form of intimate molestation. Scholastically, though, he excelled using apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy his age since I came to Rugby" discovered R.B. City manager, a Mathematics master.

Academic life
He left Rugby at the prevent of 1850 and, after an interval which remains unexplained, went around in January 1851 to Oxford, attending his father's old college, Christ Church. He got simply been at Oxford 2 years whilst he received the summons personal. His mother got died of "inflammation of the brain"—peradventure meningitis or a stroke—at a age of forty-seven.

Whatever Dodgson's feelings can keep around been just about this dying, he did non allow the children to distract him bay from either his purpose at Oxford. He might not universally st& worked firm, however he was exceptionally gifted and accomplishment come easy to him. the as the result season he received a number 1 around Honour Moderations, & shortly fallowing he was nominated to a Studentship (the Christ Church same of a fellowship), by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey.

His early academic career veered between high-octane promise & resistless distraction. Across his have laziness, he failed an crucial scholarship, however however his clear brilliance as a mathematician won him a Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hang on to for the next Xxvi years. A income was skillful, however a function bored him & his stutter hampered him. Numbers of of his pupils were older & richer than he was, & 100% but all of the two were uninterested. It didn't are taught; he didn't obviously teach the two. Reciprocal apathy ruled.

At Oxford he was as well diagnosed as an epileptic, then the considerable social stigma to bear. All the same, recently John R. Hughes, director of the University of Illinois at Chicago's epilepsy clinic, has argued that Carroll may develop been misdiagnosed.

Photography

Around 1856, Dodgson took up a freshly art form of photography; first under a influence of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, & late his Oxford friend Reginald Southey and art photography pioneer Oscar Rejlander.

Dodgson before long excelled at the art, & it became an expression of his super portable inner philosophy; a belief in the divinity of what he known as beauty, by which he seemed to mean a state of lesson or even even esthetic or physical perfection. He discovered this divine beauty non just around the magic of theatre, however in the poetry of words, in the mathematical formula & mayhap supremely, in the individual form; in the system-images that moved him.

Whilst he took higher photography he sought sustaining his have representations to combine a ideals of freedom & beauty into a innocence of Eden, where a frame & mortal email can be enjoyed forswearing shame. Inside his middle age, he was to re-form this philosophy into the pursuit of beauty as the state of Grace, a means of retrieving misused innocence. This, along using his womb-to-tomb passion for the theatre, was to bring him into confrontation by owning Victorian morality and his own personal's High Church beliefs. When his independent biographer Morton Cohen noted... "He rejected outright the Calvinist principle of original sin and replaced it with the notion of inborn divinity."

A definitive functiin on his photography (Roger Taylor's Lewis Carroll, Lensman (2002) thoroughly lists each living print, & Taylor calculates that good above fifty percent of his surviving function depicts jeune fille. Nevertheless it should exist as noted that to the lesser degree a third of his original portfolio has survived (watch following). His favorite girl model was Alexandra Kitchin ("Xie"), whom he photographed around fifty days from either a age of quaternary until a age of astir Sixteen. Withwithin 1880 he was striving to exist as allowed to photograph a 16 season old Xie in 'bathing dress', however was non allowed this liberty. Virtually all of his girl cases would write their title on the corner of the print around colorful ink. It's assumed that Dodgson either destroyed or even returned a au naturel pic to the families of the girls he experienced photographed. It were hanker presumed wasted, however half a dozen nudes st& since surfaced, tetrad of which keep around been published and some other 2 of which little is known. Dodgson's practice of photographing or even sketching au naturel girls has added to speculation that he was the paedophile (see following). There is a clear difference between Dodgson's girls & depictions by more Victorian creative person; around just about tons of his solo portraits of girls it is depicted burdenless per heavily weight of Victorian symbolism, & come only & strongly themselves.

. He likewise processed a select few landscapes & anatomy studies.

Dodgson short ceased to photograph inside 1880. On top Twenty-four years he got totally mastered a medium, install his have studio at a top of Tom Quad, & created about 3,000 images. Less than Gr& use survived period and deliberate destruction. He spent many hours every day creating a diary detailing a circumstances surrounding the making of every pic, however this register was in the future destroyed.

By owning a advent of Modernism tastes changed, and his photography became forgotten from either in 1920 until a Sixties. He is currently considered a single of a super right Victorian lensman, & is sure a one world health organizatiin has got a virtually all influence on modern art photographers.

Character
the immature adult Charles Dodgson was astir sestet foot tall, slender & handsome within a soft-focused dreamy kinda way, sustaining curling light brown hair & blue eyes. At the remarkably late age of 17, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough which left him with unfortunate hearing inside his best ear & was probably responsible his chronically feeble chest inside late life. A single open defect he carried into adulthood was what he known as his "hesitation"—a stammer he had acquired within early childhood & which was to plague him throughout his entire life.

the stutter has universally been a potent a portion of the myth. These are section of the mythology that Carroll lone stammered around grownup company, & was loose & fluent expectant, however no grounds to believe to trend lines this idea. Numerous youngsters of his acquaintance remembered a stutter when numerous adults failed to notice it. It come & went for its have reasons, but not as a clichéd manifestation of fear of the grown globe. Dodgson himself was far extra acutely caring of it than virtually all humans he met. Although his stutter troubled him — potentially obsessed him another time — it was never bad plenty to prevent him utilizing his more qualities to launder easily around society.

He was naturally gregarious & egocentric plenty to relish attention & admiration. At one time after humans devised their have amusements & singing & recitation were called upon social skills, a immature Dodgson was easily-equipped as an piquant entertainer. He may sing sol-so swell & was non afraid to clean so before of an audience. He was skillful at mimicry & story-telling. He was reputedly quite skillful at charades.

There are brief hints at the soaring feel of the negro spiritual & the divine; little moments that reveal a rich & intensely lived inner life. 'That is a uncivilized & beautiful bit of poetry, the song of "call the cattle home",' he suddenly discovered, in the middle of an analysis of Charles Kingsley's novel Alton Locke:

We remember hearing it sung at Albrighton: I personally question whenever any 1 there stand entered into a spirit of Alton Locke. I personally believe non. We believe a character of virtually all that I personally meet is but refined brute... How else pack seem to care for the merely cases of really interest around life.

He was besides quite socially challenging, anxious to produce his mark on the world somehow, as a writer, or even as an creative person. It was maybe a realisation that his talent as an creative person was non sufficient that he at length turned to photography. His scholastic career wwhen seen as something of the prevent-make-do to supplementary more exciting attainments that he desired.

In a meanwhile between his early promulgated writing & the profits of Alice, he began to move in the Pre-Raphaelite social circle. He foremost met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. Dodgson developed a close relationship by having the Dante Gabriel Rossetti & his family, and too knew William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Arthur Hughes among other creative person. He likewise knew a fairy-tale creator George MacDonald well - it was the enthusiastic reception of Alice per immature MacDonald girl that convinced him to submit a function for publication.

Writing career
When you took his writing career, Carroll wrote poetry and short stories, sending them to various magazines & enjoying moderate profits. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications, A Comedian Days & A Train, likewise when little magazines such as a Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic.

Virtually all of his output was funny, occasionally satirical. However his standards & his ambitions were fastidious. "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 around July 1855. Years prior to Alice, he was thought higher ideas for youngsters's books that would produce money: 'Christmas book [that would] sell swell... Practical hints for constructing Puppet & the theatre'. A idewhen had better as he had older, however his cagy mind, using an eye to income, was universally there.

Inside 1856 he published his first piece of function under a title that would produce him famed. The super predictable little romanticist verse form known as "Solitude" appeared in The Train under a authorship of 'Lewis Carroll'. This nom de guerre was the play in his really title, Lewis existence a anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was a Latin for Lutwidge, & Carroll existence an anglicised version of Carolus, the Latin for Charles. In the equivalent season, the freshly Dean, Henry Liddell, arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him the immature married woman & youngsters, completely of whom would figure largely inside Dodgson's life all over a resulting years. He became close friends by using a mother & them, particularly a deuce-ace sisters Ina, Alice and Edith. It seems there became something of a tradition of his ingesting the girls retired on the flow of any stream for picnics at Godstow or Nuneham.

It get on of these such expedition, around 1862, that Dodgson invented a outline of the story that in time became his number 1 & big commercial profits — the foremost Alice book. Getting told the story & been begged by Alice Liddell to write it down, Dodgson in time bestowed Alice sustaining a hand-written, illustrated manuscript entitled ''Alice's Escapade Under Ground (okay, in the British Library, Add. MS 46700). Late he took a little book to Macmillan a publisher, world health organization liked it immediately. Fallowing a imaginable option titles Alice Among a Fairies & Alice's Golden Hour were rejected, a act wwhen eventually published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier. the illustrations this instance were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson manifestly realised that a promulgated book would require the skills of a sales person creative person.

By having a quick, fantastic profits of Alice, a story of the creator's life becomes profits divided around 2: a continuing story of Dodgson's real world & a evolving myth surrounding "Lewis Carroll." Carroll quickly became the rich & elaborate alter ego, a persona when renowned & deeply embedded in a popular psyche when the story he told. To him belongs the big section of the image of little girls & unknown spirituality that you understand from either andy skinner of Alice.

These are accepted that throughout his growing wealth & fame, he continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and that he remained within home there until his demise. He published Through the Searching-Glass & what Alice Discovered There in 1872; his great Joycean mock-epic The Hunting of the Snark, in 1876 (inspired by & dedicated to his more groovy baby-friend fallowing Alice Liddell, Gertrude Chataway), and his survive novel, them-volume Sylvie and Bruno, in 1889 and 1893 respectively.

He too published several mathematical papers & books under his have title.

Other selected works
An Simple Treatise in Determinants Symbolic Logic Euclid and his Modern Rivals The Alphabet Cipher What the Tortoise Said to Achilles. ''Hiawatha's Photographing'' (the parody of The Song of Hiawatha)

Allegations of paedophilia
Dodgson’s undeniable fondness for little girls (especially Alice Liddell, from whom these are typically said he can have derived his own "Alice", although he himself seems to keep close at hand denied this origin), a sheer total of his tyke-friends, his collection of the early baby photo by Oscar Rejlander, his love of a London theatres before the tike-actress reforms, & psychological readings of his act — especially his exposure of nude or even even semi-nude girls & his sketch block featuring his own drawings of nude or semi-nude girls — have all led to speculation that he was the paedophile, albeit probably a continent 1.

A issue has been contentious, using a select few arguing that little one nudes were non rare in a period of the era. (More guiding light Victorian-era lensman world health organization took images of naked toddlers include Julia Margaret Cameron, Francis Meadow Sutcliffe, Oscar Rejlander, and others.)

Based on data from a 'controversial' investigation by Karoline Leach into what she calls the 'Carroll Myth' (view around the image below), the number one hints of allegations that Dodgson was a paedophile seem to use at times appeared in 1932, in The Life of Lewis Carroll by Langford Reed. Reed apparently was a number one to claim that 100% of Carroll's female friendly relationship ended whilst a girls reached puberty (around Xvi within 1870s England), though Reed apparently only arranged to indicate that Dodgson was thereby the pure human unsullied by touch of lust for full-grown flesh. This claim that Dodgson wasted interest inside girls when it reached pubescence was late caught higher by more biographers, world health organization remained unaware of the grounds to believe contrarily since Dodgson's personal refused to publish his diaries & letters.

A look at of Dodgson when with there is no grownup life & existence preoccupied big persisted among his biographers, including Florence Becker Lennon (Victoria Through the Looking-Glass - UK title "Lewis Carroll"), 1945) and a extremely influential Alexander Taylor (The White Knight, 1952). A debate tended to veer between people world health organization believed Dodgson to st& been innocently obsessed enceinte and people world health organization believed this obsession to use been pedophilic.

A issue was rekindled inside 1995 with the authoritative Lewis Carroll, a Biography by Morton Cohen. Cohen 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. Certainly he always sought to have another adult present when nude prepubescents modelled for him."''

A merely recorded case of pain associated by using a nudes of youngsters was Dodgson's case sustaining a Mayhew personal. Around 1879, Dodgson wrote what have been known as by Cohen "several curious letters ... to the family of Andrew Mayhew, an Oxford colleague ... He asked permission to take nude photographs of the three Mayhew daughters, ages 6, 11, and 13, with no other adults present." the Mayhew parents, world health organization experienced antecedently allowed Dodgson to photograph their toddlers, refused, & Cohen notes this equivalent period of time saw a "sudden break in the friendship" between Dodgson & a Mayhew personal (p. 170). Leaching suggests that a condition lay using his want to learn a older girl around frontal positions & non by using a immature toddlers.

Karoline Leach's work and the 'Carroll Myth'
The fresh analysis of Dodgson's intimate propensity (& indeed a evolution of the entire run of his life history) appears within Karoline Leach's 1999 book, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild. She claims that a image of Dodgson's alleged paedophilia wwhen built away from a failure to know Victorian lesson, too as a mistaken idea that Dodgson got there are no interest within grownup women which evolved away from the minds of various biographers. She termed this simplified, typically candidly fabricated image 'a Carroll Myth'.

Based on data from Leaching, world health organization cites lot prima facie evidence, Dodgson's real life was super different from either a accepted biographic image. He as a matter of fact was keenly interested around grown women & apparently enjoyed many relationships using women, married & individual; occasionally one were his toddler-friends sustaining whom (inside complete refutation of the fabulous idea that he 'misused interest' in any girl across a age of Xiv) he retained skillful relations into adulthood, however others — such as Catherine Lloyd, Constance Burch, Edith Shute, Gertrude Thomson (to name however two or three) — were women he met when adults & by owning whom he shared super close & meaningful friendly relationship. Suggestions of pedophilithe single evolved several years while his dying, when his easily-meaning personal experienced suppressed 100% grounds to believe one big friendly relationship sequentially to try to preserve his reputation, so generating the treasonably impression of a human single concerned inside little girls. When non whole paedophiles come attracted alone to tykes, this does repudiate a few of the authoritative grounds to believe for the claim.

Dodgson's problems by using social disapproval, Leaching says, stemmed non from either his usage of au naturel little one system however his tries for slightly older system to pose within 'bathing dress' & more immodest article of clothing. These studies of scantily-dressed older system stand totally disappeared, allowing commentators single a pic of lass to comment in.

Inside the read of the title inside Victorian Studies (Vol.43, No.Little joe) reviewer Donald Rackin wrote, "As a piece of biographical scholarship, Karoline Leach's In the Shadow of the Dreamchild is difficult to take seriously", still, for all the emotional intensity of his attack, he visibly failed to detail any actual errors inside her function. Nor use at times any errors been pointed retired therefore far by any more authorities, & several at present regard her act as an significant step towards the better understanding of Carroll. Her act has been paralleled by that of Hugues Lebailly whose studies of Dodgson's artistic and social interests besides trend lines a idea that a image of his 'obsession' by owning little female tykes was largely simplistic or even mythological inside origin.

Jack the Ripper theories
Several untamed theories own been woven around a life of Lewis Carroll. Peradventure a virtually all extreme emerged inside 1996 when author Richard Wallace published a book coroneted Jack the Ripper, Light-Hearted Friend accusing Lewis Carroll and his colleague Thomas Vere Bayne of being Jack the Ripper. It was largely depending upon anagrams Wallace constructed from Carroll's writing. Carroll & Bayne develop hard alibis for virtually all of the nights of the Ripper execution, & Wallace's theory has non incurred trend lines from either more scholars.

Carroll did indicate a bit of interest in a Jack a Ripper example, however this is hardly unusual, given a profound publicity surrounding the crimes. The passage around his diary dated August 26, 1891, reports that he spoke that day with an acquaintance of his all about his "very ingenious theory about 'Jack the Ripper'". There is no more trading tools just about this theory has been discovered.

Inventions
Lewis Carroll seems to keep around thought much all about training solve occasionally most common technical indicator problems of the day. A fact that he wwhen entity to know & have recently technologies is amply demonstrated by his utilize of the camera, which wwhen non as user-friendly as these are in todays world.

A single such inventiin, every bit cited inside his journal on September 24, 1891 and as published within, was the formulas of writing known as Nyctography and a thing known as a Nyctograph. He invented this because he would become unable to sleep when asleep & would obviously write down his ideas to clear his head. However, wanting to last quickly back to bed, he did non obviously last across all the mechanical steps exposed inside lighting the lamp. He designed the card by having square holes within the regular grid. the single would universally produce a dot in the upper-left corner then produce more dots and/or strokes. These symbols were designed to look somewhat rather a letters or even figures it represented. This did non seem to become utilized for any hanker writings, since there is no writings using these symbols endure. However these are likely that Lewis Carroll himself would apply this to produce short notes to jog his memory, so he would probably write a idea call at his journal. He as well invented a pencil & paper gage Word Ladder.