Lewis Carroll

(1832 - 1898)

Lewis Carroll (né Charles Dodgson) was a photographer, mathematician, novelist, and deacon in the Church of England. He took his pseudonym in 1856, inverting his first name, Charles, and his matronymic, Lutwidge, then translating them into Latin and back into English. A lifelong bachelor whose persistent stammer made conversation with children easier than with adults, Carroll first told the story of a girl falling down a rabbit hole to ten-year-old Alice Liddell at a picnic in 1862. “Oh, Mr. Dodgson,” she said, “I wish you would write out Alice’s adventures for me!” He published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and Through the Looking-Glass in 1871.