Self-effacing, yet having an expressive critical ability; reveling in the possibilities of fancy, though thoroughly at home with the sophisticated nuances of logic and mathematics, Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was an individual who, through his rare and diversified literary gifts and power of communication, left an indelible mark upon the imaginations of children and adults both during his generation and in generations to come. His best-known works, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There (1872) are still enjoyed by readers throughout the world and have been adapted for radio, television, and motion pictures.
Born in the small parish of Daresbury on January 27, 1832, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll) was the son of Charles Dodgson, archdeacon, and Frances Jane Lutwidge. The third of 11 children, Dodgson’s secluded, quiet, and protected early childhood stands in ironic contrast to the impact he was to have on the world of Victorian children’s literature. In The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898), Carroll’s nephew Stuart Dodgson Collingwood wrote that his uncle “invented the strangest diversions for himself ... made pets of the most odd and unlikely animals, and numbered certain snails and toads among his intimate friends.”
Nurtured by a loving mother and father, Dodgson began writing at an early age. While at the Richmond School in 1845, Dodgson composed Useful and Instructive Poetry, his first family magazine, for the edification of his seven-year-old brother, Wilfred Longley Dodgson, and his five-year-old sister, Louisa Fletcher Dodgson; this book was finally published over 100 years later, in 1954. Of his writing in general, Mr. Tate, his instructor, was later to comment that the younger Dodgson was given toward some “creativity in replacing the inflexions of nouns and verbs, as detailed in our grammars,” a fault which Dr. Tate reassured the elder Dodgson his son would most likely outgrow.
The Sylvie and Bruno books are Carroll’s last full-length works for children. Following Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, he was to produce shorter works, including several publications on logic. A Fascinating Mental Recreation for the Young (1895) was an eight-page circular advertising the author’s Symbolic Logic, Part I, which was to appear in 1896. The following year, Carroll delivered “An Address for Children” at St. Mary Magdalen Church during a children’s service. It presented four accounts of acts of kindness and love designed to serve as examples to be emulated by boys and girls.
Early in January 1898 Carroll received word of the death of his brother-in-law Charles Stuart Collingwood. It was his intention to attend the funeral, but within the week Carroll developed a case of influenza, causing his plans to be halted abruptly. He died on January 14, 1898. Two weeks following his death, Dean Paget was to state aptly of Carroll during the course of a sermon: “The brilliant, venturesome imagination, defying forecast with ever fresh surprise; the sense of humour in its finest and most naive form; the power to touch with lightest hand the undercurrent of pathos in the midst of fun; the audacity of creative fancy, and the delicacy of insight—these are rare gifts; and surely they were his.” It is for these gifts and their resulting contributions that Lewis Carroll occupies a seminal place in the history of children’s literature.