Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, known by his nom de plume Lewis Carroll, was born in 1832 into a Northern English family steeped in tradition and ritual. He was the fourth consecutive Charles Dodgson in his paternal line. He attended Rugby School, an environment in which he was deeply unhappy despite excelling in his studies. He struggled with a stammer and had difficulty applying himself, but his natural academic gifts carried him through. He went on to attend his father’s alma mater, Christ Church, Oxford University, earning high marks and receiving his BA in mathematics in 1854. He remained at the college as a teacher, librarian, and other capacities for the rest of his life. He was also an accomplished logician, inventor, and photographer.
Dodgson, a writer from childhood, began publishing his work after finishing his studies. March of 1856 saw the first appearance of the name Lewis Carroll. At that time, he befriended colleague Henry Liddell and his family, including his daughter Alice. A story he improvised to entertain them on a rowing trip became Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, an ingenious work of children’s literature incorporating poetry, wordplay, humor, and great imagination. Published in 1865, the work earned Lewis Carroll worldwide fame and popularized the genre of “nonsense literature,” a term applied to the made-up language of poems such as “Jabberwocky” within the book. He died of pneumonia in 1898.