Behind The Looking Glass - The life and works of Lewis Carrroll
Lewis Carroll is well known throughout the world as the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Behind the famous pseudonym was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematical lecturer at Oxford University with remarkably diverse talents.
Born in 1832, in Daresbury, Cheshire, he spent his early life in the north of England (at Daresbury, Cheshire and in Croft, Yorkshire). He spent his adult life in Oxford and died at Guildford in 1898. Besides the Alice books, he wrote many others including poems, pamphlets and articles. He was a skilled mathematician, logician and pioneering photographer and he invented a wealth of games and puzzles which are of great interest today. Through his range of talents he has acquired great respect and has a large following.
On 4 July 1862 Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), accompanied by the three eldest daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, Lorina, Alice and Edith, and The Rev. Robinson Duckworth of Trinity College, took a boat trip ‘up the river to Godstow’.
During the trip, the first outlines of the story of Alice’s Adventures under Ground were narrated. On return to Christ Church, Alice urged Dodgson to write out the story for her. That evening and on a train journey the next day, he set out the main headings. He started a manuscript text on 13 November 1862, completing it on 10 February 1863.
It is likely that he left spaces in the text to be filled with his own illustrations at a later date. The manuscript was seen by the novelist Henry Kingsley and the family of the writer of children’s books George MacDonald, who all urged him to consider publication.
Dodgson retained the manuscript version for reference as he expanded the book into the fuller text of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In November 1864 he presented the manuscript volume of Alice’s Adventures under Ground, complete with his own illustrations, to Alice Liddell.