For other people named Charles Dodgson, see Charles Dodgson. Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of children’s uncle dans dip, notably Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass.
Carroll came from a family of high-church Anglicans, and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar and teacher. In 1982, a memorial stone to Carroll was unveiled in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. There are Lewis Carroll societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works. Most of Dodgson’s male ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergy.
Dodgson was born in All Saints’ Vicarage at Daresbury, Cheshire, near Warrington, the eldest boy and the third child. Charles’s father was an active and highly conservative cleric of the Church of England who later became the Archdeacon of Richmond and involved himself, sometimes influentially, in the intense religious disputes that were dividing the church. During his early youth, Dodgson was educated at home. His “reading lists” preserved in the family archives testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven, he was reading books such as The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Dodgson did not claim he suffered from bullying but cited little boys as the main targets of older bullies at Rugby. Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. I have not had a more promising boy at his age since I came to Rugby”, observed mathematics master R. He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and matriculated at the University of Oxford in May 1850 as a member of his father’s old college, Christ Church. His early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible distraction. He did not always work hard but was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him.
1863 photograph of Carroll by Oscar G. He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, although this might be on account of a knee injury sustained in middle age. As a very young child, he suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear. The stammer has always been a significant part of the image of Dodgson. While one apocryphal story says that he stammered only in adult company and was free and fluent with children, there is no evidence to support this idea.
Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer, while many adults failed to notice it. Dodgson’s stammer did trouble him, but it was never so debilitating that it prevented him from applying his other personal qualities to do well in society. He lived in a time when people commonly devised their own amusements and when singing and recitation were required social skills, and the young Dodgson was well equipped to be an engaging entertainer. He reportedly could sing tolerably well and was not afraid to do so before an audience. In the interim between his early published writings and the success of the Alice books, Dodgson began to move in the pre-Raphaelite social circle.
He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. In broad terms, Dodgson has traditionally been regarded as politically, religiously, and personally conservative. Martin Gardner labels Dodgson as a Tory who was “awed by lords and inclined to be snobbish towards inferiors”. He has brought us back to our one Father, and made us His brethren, and so brethren to one another—we shall have all we need to guide us through the shadows. Dodgson also expressed interest in other fields.