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Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the renowned Victorian author, was better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll. He was the eldest son and third of eleven children born to Rev. Charles Dodgson then Perpetual Curate of Daresbury, Cheshire, and his wife Frances Jane (Lutwidge) Dodgson.[1] [2]
At age 12 he was sent to Richmond School, where he thrived and did particularly well in mathematics, and at age 14 he entered Rugby School, of which institution he later denied "that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again." [3]
On 23 May 1850, Charles Dodgson matriculated at Christ College, Oxford,[4] where in 1854 he took the BA degree, with first class honors in Mathematics (head of the class) and second in Classics. In 1855, he was named Sub-librarian of Christ Church Library, Master of the House, and was awarded the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship. On 5 February 1857 he received the MA degree.[1]
In 1852, Charles Dodgson was awarded a studentship (scholarship) at Christ's College, the conditions of which required that he take Holy Orders and remain unmarried. He remained unmarried throughout his life but was reluctant to be ordained - perhaps because he did not ever want to leave the College, which remained his true home for the rest of his life.[5] He was ordained deacon on 22 December 1861 but never did advance to the priesthood.[6]
While resident at Christ's Church, Charles Dodgson naturally made the acquaintance of Henry Liddell, appointed Dean of the College in 1856, and Liddell's three young daughters. It was for Alice Liddell and her sisters Lorina and Edith that he began to tell the stories of Alice and her adventures in Wonderland, which were first published in 1865 under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It has remained one of the favorite works of children's literature to this day; Queen Victoria was a fan.[5] [7] Further works followed in the next decade, notably Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland.
There has been some speculation about the purity of the motives of Dodgson's friendships with young children, but this remains speculation - fueled additionally by his artistic nude photographs of them. He was a skilled amateur photographer, working from 1856 to 1880, who also produced portraits of such figures as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday, Lord Salisbury, and Alfred Tennyson.[8]
More recently, Charles Dodgson's work in mathematics and logic - both pure and applied - has become better known and appreciated. Philosopher Martin Gardner [9] notably pointed out the philosophical insights hidden within the pages of the Alice books. (eg, "Humpty Dumpty is a deeper philosopher of language than Wittgenstein.")[10] His 1895 essay "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", written as Lewis Carroll, explored the logic of the infinite regress.
In his academic work, Charles Dodgson's two books on Symbolic Logic helped lay the groundwork for that discipline,[11] and his 1884 "Principles of Parliamentary Representation" was groundbreaking.[12]
In 1881, Charles Dodgson resigned from his lectureship in mathematics, becoming Curator of the Common Room at Christ Church the next year. In 1892 he resigned as Curator. He died in Guildford, Surrey, on January 14, 1898, age 66. [13] He was buried on 19 January 1898. Under his name in the burial register is erroneously written "Priest". [14]
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