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Charles Lutwidge Dodgson |
Lewis Carroll is the pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He arrived at this pseudonym by translating his two first names back into English from Latin and reversing their order.
He spent his boyhood at the rectory opposite the church where his father was rector at Croft on Tees, North Yorkshire, England. He went to Richmond Grammar School (Yorkshire), before going on to Rugby School soon after the school had been re-organised under Dr Arnold. He then went down to Christ Church, Oxford. He became mathematical lecturer at the same college from 1855 until his retirement in 1881. He was ordained as a clergyman in 1861, but held no benefice and rarely preached. A shy man and handicapped by a stammer his self-consciousness was only lessened in the presence of children, especially girls. Alice Liddell, second of the three young daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, was the greatest among these 'child friends'. On 4 July, 1862, he and another took the sisters out boating and Dodgson entertained his audience with short stories. These stories appeared in print in 1865 as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It was followed by Through the Looking Glass (1872), relating the further adventures of Alice. These books describe the adventures of a child in a dream atmosphere with its own logic that appeals to both adults and children. He was also master of the "nonsense" verse, his most famous being "The Hunting of the Snark" (1876).
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