CHARLES LUTWIDGE

See also:

• CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON

DODGSON  [" LEWIS CARROLL "J (1832–1898), English mathematician and author, son of the Rev . Charles Dodgson, vicar of Daresbury, Cheshire, was born in that village on the 27th of January 1832 . The literary life of " Lewis Carroll " became familiar to a wide circle of readers, but the private life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was retired and practically uneventful . After four years' schooling at Rugby, Dodgson matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in May 1850; and from 1852 till 187o held a studentship there . He took a first class in the final mathematical school in 1854, and the following year was appointed mathematical lecturer at Christ Church, a post he continued to fill till 1881 . In 1861 he was ordained deacon, but he never took priest's orders, possibly because of a stammer which prevented reading aloud . His earliest publications, beginning with A Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry (1860) and The Formulae of Plane Trigonometry (1861), were exclusively mathematical; but late in the year 1865 he published, under the pseudonym of " Lewis Carroll," Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a work that was the outcome of his keen sympathy with the imagination of children and their sense of fun . Its success was immediate, and the name of " Lewis Carroll " has ever since been a household word . A dramatic version of the " Alice " books by Mr Savile Clarke was produced at Christmas, 1886, and has since enjoyed many revivals . Mr Dodgson was always very fond of children, and it was an open secret that the original of " Alice " was a daughter of Dean Liddell . Alice was followed (in the " Lewis Carroll " series) by Phantasmagoria, in 1869; Through the Looking-Glass, in 1871; The Hunting of the Snark (1876); Rhyme and Reason (1883); A Tangled Tale (1885); and Sylvie and Bruno (in two parts, 1889 and 1893) . He wrote skits on Oxford subjects from time to time .

The

Dynamics of a Particle was written on the occasion of the contest between Gladstone and Mr Gathorne Hardy (afterwards earl of Cranbrook); and The New Belfry in ridicule of the erection put up at Christ Church for the bells that were removed from the Cathedral tower . While " Lewis Carroll " was delighting children of all ages, C . L . Dodgson periodically published mathematical works—An Elementary Treatise on Determinants (1867) 1 Euclid, Book proved Algebraically (1874); Euclid. and his Modern Rivals (1879), the work on which his reputation as a mathematician largely rests; and Curiosa •Mathematica (1888) . Throughout this dual existence Mr Dodgson pertinaciously refused to acquiesce in being publicly identified with " Lewis Carroll." Though the fact of his authorship of the " Alice " books was well known, he invariably stated, when occasion called for such a pronouncement, that " Mr Dodgson neither claimed nor acknowledged any connexion with the books hot published under his name." He died at Guildford, on the 14th of January 1898 . His memory is appropriately kept green by a cot in the Children's Hospital, Great Ormond Street, London, which was endowed perpetually by a public subscription . See S . D . Collingwood, Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) .