Born 1832. Matric. Ch. Ch., Oxford, 23 May 1850; Student, 1852–70; B.A., 1854; M.A., 1857. Ordained Deacon, 1861. Mathematical Lecturer, Ch. Ch., 1855–81. Works: “A Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry,” 1860; “The Formulæ of Plane Trigonometry,” 1861; “A Guide to the Mathematical Student,” 1864; “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (under pseud. “Lewis Carroll”), 1866 [1865]; “An Elementary Treatise on Determinants,” 1867; “The Fifth Book of Euclid treated Algebraically,” 1868; “Phantasmagoria” (by “Lewis Carroll”), 1869; “Songs from ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,’” 1870; “Through the Looking-Glass” (by “Lewis Carroll”), 1871; “Facts, Figures and Fancies” (reprint of part of “Phantasmagoria”), 1871; “Euclid, Bk. V., proved Algebraically,” 1874; “The Hunting of the Snark” (by “Lewis Carroll”), 1876; “Euclid and his Modern Rivals,” 1879; “Doublets” (by “Lewis Carroll”), 1879; “Rhyme and Reason” (by “Lewis Carroll”), 1883; “Lawn Tennis Tournaments,” 1883; “The Principles of Parliamentary Representation,” 1884; “A Tangled Tale” (by “Lewis Carroll”), 1885; “Alice’s Adventures Underground: a facsimile of the original MS.,” 1886; “The Game of Logic” (by “Lewis Carroll”), 1887; “Curiosa Mathematica,” pt. i., 1888; “Sylvie and Bruno” (by “Lewis Carroll”), 1889; “The Nursery ‘Alice,’” 1890; “Sylvie and Bruno concluded” (by “Lewis Carroll”), 1893; “Symbolic Logic,” pt. i., 1896; He has edited: Euclid, Bks. i, ii, 1882.

Personal

  It would be futile to attempt even a bare list of the children whom he loved, and who loved him; during forty years of his life he was constantly adding to their number. Some remained friends for life, but in a large proportion of cases the friendship ended with the end of childhood…. These friendships usually began all very much in the same way. A chance meeting on the seashore, in the street, at some friend’s house, led to conversation; then followed a call on the parents, and after that all sorts of kindnesses on Lewis Carroll’s part, presents of books, invitations to stay with him at Oxford, or at Eastbourne, visits with him in the theatre. For the amusement of his little guests he kept a large assortment of musical-boxes, and an organette which had to be fed with paper tunes. On one occasion he ordered about twelve dozen of these tunes “on approval,” and asked one of the other dons, who was considered a judge of music, to come in and hear them played over. In addition to these attractions there were clock-work bears, mice, and frogs, and games and puzzles in infinite variety…. It was only to those who had but few personal dealings with him that he seemed stiff and “donnish;” to his more intimate acquaintances, who really understood him, each little eccentricity of manner or of habits was a delightful addition to his charming and interesting personality. He very seldom sat down to write, preferring to stand while thus engaged. When making tea for his friends, he used, in order, I suppose, to expedite the process, to walk up and down the room waving the teapot around, and telling meanwhile those delightful anecdotes of which he had an inexhaustible supply…. At meals he was very abstemious always, while he took nothing in the middle of the day except a glass of wine and a biscuit. Under these circumstances it is not very surprising that the healthy appetites of his little friends filled him with wonder, and even with alarm.

  To have ever known such a man as he was is an inestimable boon. To have been with him for so long as a child, to have known so intimately the man who above all others had understood childhood, is indeed a memory on which to look back with thanksgiving and with tears…. He was afflicted with what I believe is known as “Housemaid’s Knee,” and this made his movements singularly jerky and abrupt. Then again he found it impossible to avoid stammering in his speech. He would, when engaged in an animated conversation with a friend, talk quickly and well for a few minutes, and then suddenly and without any very apparent cause would begin to stutter so much, that it was often difficult to understand him. He was very conscious of this impediment, and he tried hard to cure himself. For several years he read a scene from some play of Shakespeare’s every day aloud, but despite this he was never quite able to cure himself of the habit. Many people would have found this a great hindrance to the affairs of ordinary life, and would have felt it deeply. Lewis Carroll was different. His mind and life were so simple and open that there was no room in them for self-consciousness, and I have often heard him jest at his own misfortune, with a comic wonder at it. The personal characteristic that you would notice most on meeting Lewis Carroll was his extreme shyness. With children, of course, he was not nearly so reserved, but in the society of people of maturer age he was almost old-maidishly prim in his manner. When he knew a child well this reserve would vanish completely, but it needed only a slightly disconcerting incident to bring the cloak of shyness about him once more, and close the lips that just before had been talking so delightfully.

  To Dodgson’s shyness may partially be attributed the circumstance that his friendships were carried on more by letter than by personal intercourse; and it may account to some extent for the fact that his most cherished intimates were little girls, in entertaining whom he was tireless. There is also no doubt that the dictates of a conscience which was perhaps over exacting for daily life were obeyed too closely for him to be companionable to ordinary adult persons. He made, however, acquaintance with eminent men—among them Ruskin, Tennyson, Millais, and Rossetti—of who he has left valuable photographs, amateur photography having been successfully practiced by him almost from boyhood.

  He must have been, if all the stories still told about him are true, one of the most eccentric of Eccentrics. He did not care for young men, it seems, but he liked young women, who all liked him; and Oxford is now full of women, mature and immature, who adore the gentle memory of the creator of “Alice.” One of them, still a young woman, who was but a baby when “Wonderland” was originally visited, says of him that, “he was a man whom one had to read backward.” He had to be looked at “As Through a Looking Glass.” She describes him as moody, and as a man of strong dislikes. But he liked her; and, hand in hand on the roofs of the College, she, as a child, and he used to wander, he always amiable and full of queer conceits of speech and of imagination.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1866

  Mr. Dodgson’s specialty, as all the world knows, was mathematics; his passion,—children. He wasted no time on “grown-ups” that could be given to the little ones—girls, I should add, for he paid little attention to mere boys! “Alice in Wonderland,” as all the world also knows, originated in a series of stories told to his particular pet child, Alice Liddell (Mrs. Reginald Hargreaves), and her two younger sisters…. We have Dr. George Macdonald to thank for the Lewis Carroll books. Their author had no idea of publishing them, but his friend, Dr. Macdonald, who had read them, persuaded him to submit them to a publisher…. To the surprise of author and publisher, two thousand copies of the book were sold at once, and “Alice” increased the bank account of her creator for many years.

  It is now more than thirty years ago since “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” was first published. The book at once met with wide-spread appreciation. Some years later, a companion volume, entitled, “Through the Looking Glass,” made its appearance, and soon became equally popular. How many editions of these inimitable books have since been reprinted, we know not; yet we may surely take it for granted that, since their publication, few children, amongst those who are fortunate enough to enjoy the privilege of having children’s books, have been brought up in ignorance of these “classics of the nursery.” But the two “Alices” are not merely “classics of the nursery,” they are something more. How many older children—“children of an uncertain age,” as their author naïvely calls them in his preface to “The Nursery Alice”—have delighted in their pages and laughed over their droll humor! There is, indeed, much in that humor which appeals only to such “older children;” and no books written for children within recent years, have enjoyed such a marvellous popularity, or have been so extensively quoted in all sorts of connection as the “Alices.”

  “Lewis Carroll” may be numbered with those writers of our day who have added a new note to literature; therefore his books have that in them which is likely to win them readers for many years to come. “Alice in Wonderland” may well prove to be one of the world’s books whose freshness time cannot stale.

  “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is a play in which the subordinate actors are quite as excellent in their way as the leading character. They are differentiated from each other by a variation in their personalities, rather than by an inequality in their ability to entertain. Creatures are they of a vagrant fancy, which, like a rushing mountain stream, ofttimes reflects distorted images, but is ever pure, with the sunlight glancing from its bosom. But, like the rapid-flowing brook, there are placid pools in its course, and in one crystal, reposeful spot is the face of Alice. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” is a book which appeals alike to young and old. It is an object-lesson that tends to make us realize the truth of the adage, “Men are but boys grown tall.”

General

  Equal to the author of “Fly Leaves” in fame, but diverse in his peculiar genius, stands the immortal “Lewis Carroll,” the inventor of what may be called the modern domestic humour, the creator of that fascinating dreamland through which, veiled in a sunny mist of ethereal mirth, the daily round of life, its peaceful joys, its inanities, its fuss, friction and augmentation pass before our eyes in admired disorder. “Father William,” “The Walrus and the Carpenter” and “Jabberwocky” would, it is needless to say, have been more remarkable by their absence from our collection than anything which could have taken their place.

  “Sylvie and Bruno” was issued in 1889, and its sequel “Sylvie and Bruno Concluded” followed four years later. In this work, Mr. Collingwood says, are embodied the ideals and sentiments most dear to the author. It is didactic in aim, written with a definite purpose of turning its writer’s influence to account in enforcing neglected truths; but it falls short of the fresh and spontaneous “Alice” books as a work of art—considerably short of them, we think.

  What more healthy influence can be at work in the world than that which inclines busy, careworn men to identify themselves with an eternal youth? Genial, kind-hearted, loving Lewis Carroll! What better tribute can be paid to his excellence than to say that it was his mission in life not only to popularize purity in child literature, but to incite an emulation in other writers, productive of results the extent of the beneficent effects of which it is impossible to estimate.

  Although like Lear’s in some respects, Lewis Carroll’s nonsense is perhaps of a more refined type. There is less of the grotesque and more poetic imagery. But though Carroll was more of a poet than Lear, both had the true sense of nonsense. Both assumed the most absurd conditions and proceeded to detail their consequences with a simple seriousness that convulses appreciative readers, and we find ourselves uncertain whether it is the manner or the matter that is more amusing. Lewis Carroll was a man of intellect and education; his funniest sayings are often based on profound knowledge or deep thought. Like Lear, he never spoiled his quaint fancies by over-exaggerating their quaintness or their fancifulness, and his ridiculous plots are as carefully conceived, constructed, and elaborated as though they embodied the soundest facts. No funny detail is ever allowed to become too funny; and it is in this judicious economy of extravagance that his genius is shown.