Lewis Carroll born 1832-1898

About:

The Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832 – 1898) - clergyman, mathematician, logician and photographer, as well as author - wrote under the nom de plume of Lewis Carroll. This pseudonym was a play on his real name; Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll is an anglicised version of Carolus, the Latin for Charles. He was the third of eleven children, the son of a mathematical genius who had chosen to become a country parson instead of following the formidable academic career mapped out for him. He was a very good looking boy but suffered from a bad stammer.

A shadow hovers over Dodgson’s religious and personal life. Much has been made of his tendency to befriend small girls. His photographs of young nudes and his clear complaints of nocturnal annoyances inflicted on him whilst a boy at Rugby School have tended to influence biographers towards an accusation of what would nowadays be called paedophilia. He took deacon’s orders in 1861 but, when the time came to proceed to full orders a year later, he declined. In his diaries he describes a sense of guilt, of shame, of sin – of unworthiness to take holy orders. But none of the theories has been proven and indeed his reputation has recently undergone a form of reclamation, with even his undeniably beautiful photos of young nudes being re-examined in the light of his close connexion with the pre-Raphaelite artists and their concepts of Pure Beauty.

However the theories abound, amongst them stories of drug abuse which might seem to be borne out by the references to mushrooms, teas and smoking pipes in the two Wonderland books. In spite of his literary success and a deal of public attention following the success of his books Dodgson continued in the teaching post he had gained at Oxford University throughout his life and his must have been a fascinating mathematics tutorial.

Dodgson died at his sister’s house on 14th January, 1898, of pneumonia. He is buried at The Mount Cemetery in Guildford.