Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll wrote the two most famous children’s books in the English language — books that are not really children’s books at all, or rather, books that are children’s books and simultaneously works of linguistic philosophy, mathematical logic, political satire, psychological exploration, and pure literary art. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) have been translated into over 170 languages, quoted by everyone from philosophers to politicians, illustrated by hundreds of artists, analysed by Freudians, deconstructed by postmodernists, adapted into films, operas, ballets, and video games, and read with delight by children who understand nothing of the philosophical complexities and by adults who discover new layers of meaning with every rereading. They are, quite simply, inexhaustible.

Christ Church

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born in 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, the eldest son of an Anglican clergyman. He was educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he was elected a Student (Fellow) in 1852 and remained for the rest of his life, lecturing in mathematics and living in college rooms. He was a shy, stammering, fastidious bachelor who lived a life of extraordinary outward regularity — teaching, attending chapel, dining at High Table, and producing mathematical treatises of genuine if minor distinction.

His mathematical work included Euclid and His Modern Rivals (1879), a spirited defence of Euclidean geometry, and Symbolic Logic (1896), a textbook that introduced logical diagrams and notation that anticipated developments in modern logic. The Game of Logic (1887) was a board game designed to teach syllogistic reasoning to children.

The Alice Books

On 4 July 1862, Dodgson and his friend Robinson Duckworth rowed up the Thames with the three young daughters of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church. During the trip, Dodgson entertained the children with a story about a girl named Alice who fell down a rabbit hole. Alice Liddell asked him to write the story down, and the result — expanded and revised — was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, published by Macmillan in 1865 with illustrations by John Tenniel.

The book was revolutionary. Victorian children’s books were moral instruments — they taught lessons, rewarded virtue, and punished wickedness. Alice taught nothing. It was a dream — or a nightmare — in which the ordinary rules of logic, language, physics, and social behaviour were systematically violated. The Cheshire Cat disappeared, leaving only its grin. The Mad Hatter asked riddles with no answers. The Queen of Hearts ordered executions that were never carried out. Alice grew and shrank unpredictably. And through it all, Alice maintained a determined, common-sense rationality that made the absurdity around her seem even more absurd.

Through the Looking-Glass (1871) was, if anything, more brilliant than its predecessor — a chess game in which Alice moves through a mirror-world populated by Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Humpty Dumpty, the Jabberwock, and the White Knight, encountering along the way some of the most memorable characters and most quotable lines in English literature.

The Hunting of the Snark

The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits (1876) was Carroll’s longest poem — a mock-epic about a crew of ten (all beginning with the letter B) who set out to hunt a mysterious creature called the Snark, only to discover that it is a Boojum. The poem has been interpreted as an allegory of the search for the Absolute, an exercise in pure nonsense, a satire on philosophical inquiry, and a nightmare about death. It is probably all of these things and none of them.

The Photographs

Dodgson was one of the most distinguished amateur photographers of the Victorian era. His photographs of children — particularly his portraits of Alice Liddell — have been the subject of intense biographical speculation and controversy. Modern biographers disagree sharply about Dodgson’s relationships with children: some see him as a paedophile whose photography expressed repressed desires; others argue that Victorian attitudes toward childhood were fundamentally different from modern ones and that the photographs must be understood in their own cultural context. The evidence is inconclusive, and the debate continues.

Collecting Carroll

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Macmillan, 1866 — the true first edition, after the suppressed 1865 printing) with Tenniel illustrations is one of the most valuable books in the English language; the suppressed 1865 edition is one of the rarest and most valuable of all Victorian books. Through the Looking-Glass (Macmillan, 1871) is the companion volume. The Hunting of the Snark (Macmillan, 1876) is the major poem. Carroll’s mathematical works — Symbolic Logic, The Game of Logic, Euclid and His Modern Rivals — are collected by specialists. His photographs, when they appear on the market, command very high prices.