LEWIS CARROLL
English author (1832-1898)
Biography:
Charles L. Dogson was born in Daresbury (Lancashire) in 1832, son of a protestant minister. At the age of 18 he joint Christ Church, within Oxford University. Later, he got a degree in Humanities and in 1857 he became teacher at the University. From 1855 on, he worked at the Oxford Library, combining his librarian job with private classes, courses at the university and collaborations in literary reviews. It's precisely then that he met little Alice Liddell, one of the dean's daughters, for whom he was going to write Alice's adventures. In 1865, Carroll and Alice's parents were set at odds so he couldn't see Alice again until 1891. He met other girls who became his friends: Gertrude Chattaway in 1875, and Isa Bowman in 1887. After giving up his teachings at Christ Church, Carroll began teaching at a girls school in Oxford. He died in 1898, leaving his theoretical treaty Symbolic Logic unfinished.
Since he was 13, young Dogson devoted himself to publishing small literary magazines with his brothers and sisters, for the use of the guests at Croft Presbytery (Yorkshire) where his father preached. These magazines included his own writings, illustrations, poems and songs, some pages devoted to letters to the Editor and some short parodies of contemporary novels.
From 1855 on, and under the name of Lewis Carroll, he wrote poems for The Train. In 1869, he published a collection of poems called Phantasmagoria and other poems and in 1876 another long poem, The Hunting of the Snark. Under his true name, Dogson is the author of several mathematic works and a logic treaty of which he could only publish the fist part --Symbolic Logic Part I Elementary (MacMillan, 1896).
If we follow his personnal diary, it was the 4th July 1862 when, while sailing with Dean Liddell's daughters, Carroll narrated for the first time Alice's Adventures Underground which he "began to write for Alice". In 1864 this story became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and MacMillan published it the following year. Alice is also the heroine in Through the Looking-glass and What Alice Found There (MacMillan 1872) and The Nursery Alice (MacMillan 1889).
Carroll began to illustrate at a very young age in one of those family magazines called The Presbytery Umbrella. His frist drawings bear similarity to Rodolphe Toepffer's, Wilhelm Busch's and Edward Lear
's illustrations, quite fashionable at that time in England. Thus, weird creatures such as The Invisible Quangle Wangle may have been a source of inspiration for Carroll.