Lewis carroll biography poet

No modern fairy-tale has approached it in popularity. The charms of the book are its unstrained humor and its childlike fancy, held in check by the discretion of a, particularly clear and analytical mind. Though it seems strange that the authority on Euclid and logic should have been the inventor of so diverting and irresponsible a tale, if we examine his story critically we shall see that only a logical mind could have derived so much genuine humor from a deliberate attack on reason, in which a considerable element of the fun arises from efforts to reconcile the irreconcilable.

The book has probably been read as much by grown-ups as by young people, and no work of humor is more heartily to be commended as a banisher of care. The original illustrations by Sir John Tenniel are almost as famous as the book itself. Member Area. Word Counter. Lewis Carroll Children's Library. Username or Email Address. Remember Me. Lost your password?

Members Login. Home Explore Poets Lewis Carroll. Biography Lewis Carroll was the literary pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, born inthe third in a family of eleven children; he had seven younger sisters. Read the poem text. Jabberwocky Read by Kei Miller. Ralph Fiennes. Daniel Day-Lewis. Maggie Smith. Alan Cumming. Olivia Colman. Photography and Legacy Besides writing, Carroll created a number of fine photographs.

I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then. Watch Next. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below. Famous British People. In30 years after the 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 satirises 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. InDodgson took up the new art form of photography under the influence first of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidgeand later of his Oxford friend Reginald Southey.

A study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over half of Dodgson's surviving work depicts young girls. Thirty surviving photographs depict nude or semi-nude children.

Lewis carroll biography poet

His pictures of children were taken with a parent in attendance [ disputed — discuss ] and many of the pictures were taken in the Liddell garden because natural sunlight was required for good exposures. By the time that Dodgson abruptly ceased photographyafter 24 yearshe had established his own studio on the roof of Tom Quadcreated around 3, images, and become an amateur master of the medium, though fewer than 1, images have survived time and deliberate destruction.

He stopped taking photographs because keeping his studio working was too time-consuming. He exerted his agency of this craft by literally rewriting the text created by the image to produce a new dialogue about childhood. However, popular taste changed with the advent of Modernismaffecting the types of photographs that he produced. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other current denominations up to one shilling.

The folder was then put into a slipcase decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. It intended to organise stamps wherever one stored their writing implements; Carroll expressly notes in Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing it is not intended to be carried in a pocket or purse, as the most common individual stamps could easily be carried on their own.

The pack included a copy of a pamphlet version of this lecture. Another invention was a writing tablet called the nyctograph that allowed note-taking in the dark, thus eliminating the need to get out of bed and strike a light when one woke with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares and a system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's design, using letter shapes similar to the Graffiti writing system on a Palm device.

He also devised a number of games, including an early version of what today is known as Scrabble. Devised sometime inhe invented the "doublet" see word laddera form of brain-teaser that is still popular today, changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. Other items include a rule for finding the day of the week for any date; a means for justifying right margins on a typewriter; a steering device for a velociman a type of tricycle ; fairer elimination rules for tennis tournaments; a new sort of postal money order; rules for reckoning postage; rules for a win in betting; rules for dividing a number by various divisors; a cardboard scale for the Senior Common Room at Christ Church which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur for the price paid; a double-sided adhesive strip to fasten envelopes or mount things in books; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book placed sideways; and at least two ciphers for cryptography.

He also proposed alternative systems of parliamentary representation. He proposed the so-called Dodgson's methodusing the Condorcet method. Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in the fields of geometrylinear and matrix algebramathematical logicand recreational mathematicsproducing nearly a dozen books under his real name.

Dodgson also developed new ideas in linear algebra e. His occupation as Mathematical Lecturer at Christ Church gave him some financial security. His work in the field of mathematical logic attracted renewed interest in the late 20th century. Martin Gardner's book on logic machines and diagrams and William Warren Bartley's posthumous publication of the second part of Dodgson's symbolic logic book have sparked a reevaluation of Dodgson's contributions to symbolic logic.

Robbins' and Rumsey's investigation [ 83 ] of Dodgson condensationa method of evaluating determinantsled them to the alternating sign matrix conjecture, now a theorem. The discovery in the s of additional ciphers that Dodgson had constructed, in addition to his "Memoria Technica", showed that he had employed sophisticated mathematical ideas in their creation.

Dodgson wrote and received as many as 98, letters, according to a special letter register which he devised. He documented his advice about how to write more satisfying letters in a missive entitled " Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing ", published in Dodgson's existence remained little changed over the last twenty years of his life, despite his growing wealth and fame.

He continued to teach at Christ Church until and remained in residence there until his death. Public appearances included attending the West End musical Alice in Wonderland the first major live production of his Alice books at the Prince of Wales Theatre on 30 December The only known occasion on which he travelled abroad was a trip to Russia in as an ecclesiastic, together with the Reverend Henry Liddon.

He recounts the travel in his "Russian Journal", which was first commercially published in In his early sixties, Dodgson increasingly suffered from synovitis which eventually prevented him walking and sometimes left him bed-ridden for months. Dodgson died of pneumonia following influenza on 14 January at his sisters' home, "The Chestnuts", in Guildford in the county of Surrey, just four days before the death of Henry Liddell.

He was two weeks away from turning 66 years old. His funeral was held at the nearby St Mary's Church. He is commemorated at All Saints' Church, Daresburyin its stained glass windows depicting characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderlanderected in It explored the possibility that Dodgson's rift with the Liddell family and his temporary suspension from the college might have been caused by improper relations with their children, including Alice.

The research for the documentary found a "disturbing" full frontal nude of Alice's adolescent sister Lorina during filming, [ 94 ] and speculated on the "likelihood" of Dodgson taking the photo. However, it was later revealed the chronology for this research had more than met the eye. The provenance of the photo's link to Dodgson could be questioned.

There was no link to Dodgson, and no link to the Liddell family. The documentary raised suspicions about Dodgson being a "repressed paedophile", [ 93 ] as one of the lewises carroll biography poet, Will Selfput it. This lewis carroll biography poet was leaked to The Telegraph a week in advance. When problems about the documentary's conduct and research surfaced, The Times and The Telegraph reported it.

The material in the documentary has come under intense scrutiny by Carroll scholars, including those such as Jenny Woolf and Edward Wakeling, who appeared in it. Woolf claimed that she was not told of the use of the alleged photo until editing of the documentary was underway. Wakeling also echoed Woolf's assertions that he was not given time to talk about the alleged photo.

Wakeling claimed, "The documentary knew I could authenticate [the photo] or not, but they chose to keep it from me as they anticipated my response. The inscription on the back of the photo, attributed "lewis Carroll" in pencil, "is an unknown hand The photo negative is also missing the personal catalogue number that Dodgson meticulously catalogued his photos under.

Wakeling also points out that Dodgson never made "full frontal studies There's no way the Liddells would have allowed a picture of this kind to have been taken. The BBC Trust later ruled that the documentary could not be shown on UK TV in its current form again, as the BBC failed to tell participants of the photo's appearance during filming or give them time to fully react to it.

Late twentieth-century biographers have speculated that Dodgson's interest in children might have had an "erotic" element, including Morton N. 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. He probably felt more than he dared acknowledge, even to himself.

Cohen goes on to note that Dodgson "apparently convinced many of his friends that his attachment to the nude female child form was free of any eroticism ", but adds that "later generations look beneath the surface" p. He argues that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the year-old Alice Liddell and that this was the cause of the unexplained "break" with the family in June[ 29 ] an event for which other explanations are offered.

Biographers Derek Hudson and Roger Lancelyn Green stop short of identifying Dodgson as a paedophile Green also edited Dodgson's diaries and papersbut they concur that he had a passion for small female children and next to no interest in the adult world. Brooker considers Dodgson's alleged perversion as a product of its time that outstayed its welcome culturally:.

The psychoanalytic [Freudian] interpretations of the Alice books in the s were a product of a specific moment and movement The discourses that I traced in journalism and in some biographies, that Carroll was emotionally arrested, a repressed paedophile, an obsessive, stammering social lewis carroll biography poet Several other writers and scholars have challenged the evidential basis for Cohen's and others' views about Dodgson's potential exploitative behaviour.

Hugues Lebailly has endeavoured to set Dodgson's child photography within the "Victorian Child Cult", which perceived child nudity as essentially an expression of innocence. Dodgson's nieces removed such references from early manuscripts of Dodgson's diaries, but kept references to children, because such appreciation was not controversial at the time.

Lebailly claims that studies of child nudes were mainstream and fashionable in Dodgson's time and that most photographers made them as a matter of course, including Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Julia Margaret Cameron. Lebailly continues that child nudes even appeared on Victorian Christmas cardsimplying a very different social and aesthetic assessment of such material.

Lebailly concludes that it has been an error of Dodgson's biographers to view his child-photography with 20th- or 21st-century eyes, and to have presented it as some form of personal idiosyncrasy, when it was a response to a prevalent aesthetic and philosophical movement of the time. Karoline Leach 's reappraisal of Dodgson focused in particular on his controversial interest in nude children.

She argues that the allegations of paedophilia rose initially from a misunderstanding of Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea — fostered by Dodgson's various biographers — that he had no interest in adult women. She termed the traditional image of Dodgson "the Carroll Myth". She drew attention to the large amounts of evidence in his diaries and letters that he was also keenly interested in adult women, married and single, and enjoyed several relationships with them that would have been considered scandalous by the social standards of his time.

She also pointed to the fact that many of those whom he described as "child-friends" were girls in their late teens and even twenties. Similarly, Leach points to a biography by Langford Reed as the source of the dubious claim that many of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached the age of Dodgson had been groomed for the ordained ministry in the Church of England from a very early age, and was expected to be ordained within four years of obtaining his master's degree as a condition of his residency at Christ Church.

He delayed the process for some time but was eventually ordained as a deacon on 22 Decemberbut when the time came a year later to be ordained as a priest, Dodgson appealed to the dean for permission not to proceed. This was against college rules and, initially, Dean Liddell told him that he would have to consult the college ruling body, which would almost certainly have resulted in his being expelled.

For unknown reasons, Liddell changed his mind overnight and permitted him to remain at the college in defiance of the rules. There is currently no conclusive evidence about why Dodgson rejected the priesthood. Some have suggested that his stammer made him reluctant to take the step because he was afraid of having to preach. Wilson also points out that the Bishop of OxfordSamuel Wilberforcewho ordained Dodgson, had strong views against clergy going to the theatre, one of Dodgson's great interests.

He was interested in minority forms of Christianity he was an admirer of F. Maurice and "alternative" religions theosophy. At least four complete volumes and around seven pages of text are missing from Dodgson's 13 diaries. Most scholars assume that the diary material was removed by family members in the interests of preserving the family name, but this has not been proven.

This was also the period of time when he composed his extensive love poetry, leading to speculation that the poems were autobiographical. Many theories have been put forward to explain the missing material. A popular explanation for one missing page 27 June is that it might have been torn out to conceal a proposal of marriage on that day by Dodgson to the year-old Alice Liddell.

However, there has never been any evidence to suggest this, and a paper suggests evidence to the contrary which was discovered by Karoline Leach in the Dodgson family archive in This paper is known as the "cut pages in diary" document. Carroll's nephew Philip Dodgson Jacques reports that he wrote it well after Carroll's death, based on information from his aunts, who destroyed two diary pages, including the one for 27 June Jacques did not see the pages himself.

Liddell told Dodgson there was gossip circulating about him and the Liddell family's governessas well as about his relationship with "Ina", presumably Alice's older sister Lorina Liddell. The "break" with the Liddell family that occurred soon after was presumably in response to this gossip. What is deemed most crucial and surprising is the document seems to imply that Dodgson's break with the family was not connected with Alice at all.

Until a primary source is discovered, the events of 27 June will remain in doubt; however, a letter from the younger Lorina Liddell to Alice may shed light on the matter.